tar, Leopard, and those evil, nasty resource forks

Posted by jtbandes on Dec 7th, 2007

I’m posting this so that others don’t have to endure the frustration I just did searching for a solution.

The Problem:
tar -cvzf output_file.tgz input_dir
This includes .DS_Store files and resource forks (files beginning with ._).

The Solution:
Apparently there is an environment variable that tricks OS X into not including these resource forks: COPY_EXTENDED_ATTRIBUTES_DISABLE. However, this was deprecated in Leopard. The new solution is COPYFILE_DISABLE. The .DS_Store files can be excluded with tar’s --exclude option. Here are the final commands:

export COPYFILE_DISABLE=true
tar -cvz --exclude="*DS_Store" -f output_file.tgz input_dir

I hope I save people trouble. :)

Leopard review, a bit late

Posted by jtbandes on Nov 15th, 2007

Somehow, writing this escaped me, as I got involved in other projects. Regardless, I was waiting downtown at the Apple store at 6:00 for the Leopard release. Continue Reading »

Leopard, iPhone SDK

Posted by jtbandes on Oct 21st, 2007

First of all, Leopard has been officially scheduled for release on October 26th. That’s right, next Friday. I’m going to be at a local Apple store waiting in line for a Family Pack and a free Leopard T-shirt. But that’s not all… Continue Reading »