Search Scope for Applications not working fully

[EricKlein]

I have a local directory (under source control) where a bunch of work related apps are located. Specifically I have one with a .app extension that I launch fairly often. Locally these apps are at /Work/sw/<something>/tools/bin, and the app that I most care about is /Work/sw/<something>/tools/bin/<SomethingElse>.app (the <> are just to obfuscate the actual names, there are no special symbols actually involved here, just normal alpha characters).

In order to allow Alfred to find these apps, I've added /Work/sw/<something>/tools/bin to the "Seach Scope" list under the "Default Results" tab. Unfortunately no matter what I do, alfred just isn't finding my app. Even if I do a "open " in front, and just start typing the filename after it won't find it. It's like it's ignoring the directory that I added to the search scope list.

 

I've tried (under the advanced tab) clearing out the application cache, and rebuilding the macOS metadata, and I'm using the fuzzy capital letters apps matching setting. No luck. No matter what I've tried, these files just seem invisible to Alfred. I don't think it's a permissions issue either. Both /Work and the .../bin directory have full r-x permissions for all users groups, and rwx permissions for my account. 

 

I'm totally willing to believe I've done something dumb, but.... so far I can't figure out what it is.

[deanishe]

Can Spotlight find the applications? If not, they aren't being indexed.

[EricKlein]

Interesting. It is not in Spotlight, because I have intentionally excluded all of /Work from spotlight indexing. Is there a way to get Alfred to look in that one specific directory while excluding the rest of that tree? That tree is absolutely massive (several hundred gigabytes), and I'd really rather not have to allow indexing of all of it just so I can find a few items in there that I do regularly care about.

 

Thanks!

[deanishe]

1 hour ago, EricKlein said:

Is there a way to get Alfred to look in that one specific directory while excluding the rest of that tree?

 

Not really. The only way to exclude an entire filetree is to add it to Spotlight's privacy pane.

 

If indexing the whole kit & caboodle is out of the question, you might consider rsyncing the apps you care about to ~/Applications or another directory that is indexed.