Directory symlinks resolved in Search Scope

[wjlroe]

The issue I'm having is that when I add a directory symlink to the Search Scope, Alfred (or OS X), resolves it immediately and puts the target of the symlink (or alias) into the Search Scope. This doesn't help because the reason it's a symlink is to allow it to point elsewhere at another time.

 

Specifically, steps to reproduce:

 

1. Install Nix (instructions: http://nixos.org/nix/manual/#idm47361539616144)

2. Install something with nix that will create an App bundle in the user's ~/.nix-profile/ directory (which is a symlink): "nix-env --install macvim" (that requires Xcode to be installed)

3. Try to add ~/.nix-profile/ to the Search Scope (that's difficult because you can't select it from the Finder selection since it's a dotfile. I created a symlink from ~/Library/nix-profile (ln -s ~/.nix-profile ~/Library/nix-profile ) and used that.

4. You will see the fully resolved symlink into a specific snapshot of the nix package store. Essentially this defeats the purpose of using a package manager like nix. 

 

OS X version: 10.9.4

Alfred version: v2.3 (264)

 

Essentially the minimal way to reproduce this behaviour (it's not exactly a bug, just inconvenient behaviour), you need to create a symlink to a directory of applications and try to add that to the Search Scope in Alfred preferences and see that the target of the symlink is added and not the symlink itself.

Edited July 10, 2014 by wjlroe

[Andrew]

The issue I'm having is that when I add a directory symlink to the Search Scope, Alfred (or OS X), resolves it immediately and puts the target of the symlink (or alias) into the Search Scope. This doesn't help because the reason it's a symlink is to allow it to point elsewhere at another time.

 

Specifically, steps to reproduce:

 

1. Install Nix (instructions: http://nixos.org/nix/manual/#idm47361539616144)

2. Install something with nix that will create an App bundle in the user's ~/.nix-profile/ directory (which is a symlink): "nix-env --install macvim" (that requires Xcode to be installed)

3. Try to add ~/.nix-profile/ to the Search Scope (that's difficult because you can't select it from the Finder selection since it's a dotfile. I created a symlink from ~/Library/nix-profile (ln -s ~/.nix-profile ~/Library/nix-profile ) and used that.

4. You will see the fully resolved symlink into a specific snapshot of the nix package store. Essentially this defeats the purpose of using a package manager like nix. 

 

OS X version: 10.9.4

Alfred version: v2.3 (264)

 

Essentially the minimal way to reproduce this behaviour (it's not exactly a bug, just inconvenient behaviour), you need to create a symlink to a directory of applications and try to add that to the Search Scope in Alfred preferences and see that the target of the symlink is added and not the symlink itself.

 

Alfred resolves the symlink on adding by design for one very specific reason - performance. At the point you show Alfred, your set scope is needed. If Alfred needed to fully resolve all symlinks at this point, this could potentially be a time consuming operation, especially if there are network lookups to be performed. This would cause a temporary wait state in Alfred's interface every time you use it.

 

I'll move this to noted as I can understand your use case, but for now, Alfred is going to continue to resolve symlinks at source.

 

As a quick tip, in Finder's Open dialog, you can use shift+command+. to show hidden / dot files for selection.