Does MacPorts depend on Spotlight?

[Sriranga Veeraraghavan]

Long ago, I was told that Spotlight would not index a folder and its subfolders if the file .metadata_never_index was present.  I can’t vouch for this (mostly because I generally disable Spotlight), but it is perhaps something that someone can try and see if works, for example:

$ sudo touch /opt/local/.metadata_never_index

Also, I think there is some programmatic / CLI way to add folders to the excluded list because if you have Roxio Toast installed, it adds some folders to the Privacy list that shows up in System Preferences.

Thanks,

-ranga

> On Nov 17, 2021, at 11:49, Richard L. Hamilton <rlhamil at smart.net> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>> On Nov 17, 2021, at 14:16, André-John Mas <andrejohn.mas at gmail.com <mailto:andrejohn.mas at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> When looking at "System Preferences -> Spotlight -> Privacy", you can configure exclusions by folder.
>> 
>> I had a look at the mdutil command and no reference to folders or paths is mentioned, when looking from macOS 12.0.1:
>> 
>> Usage: mdutil -pEsa -i (on|off) -d volume ...
>>        mdutil -t {volume-path | deviceid} fileid
>> 	Utility to manage Spotlight indexes.
>> 	-i (on|off)    Turn indexing on or off.
>> 	-d             Disable Spotlight activity for volume (re-enable using -i on).
>> 	-E             Erase and rebuild index.
>> 	-s             Print indexing status.
>> 	-a             Apply command to all stores on all volumes.
>> 	-t             Resolve files from file id with an optional volume path or device id.
>> 	-p             Publish metadata.
>> 	-V vol         Apply command to all stores on the specified volume.
>> 	-v             Display verbose information.
>> 	-r plugins     Ask the server to reimport files for UTIs claimed by the listed plugin.
>> 	-L volume-path List the directory contents of the Spotlight index on the specified volume.
>> 	-P volume-path Dump the VolumeConfig.plist for the specified volume.
>> 	-X volume-path Remove the Spotlight index directory on the specified volume.  Does not disable indexing.
>> 	               Spotlight will reevaluate volume when it is unmounted and remounted, the
>> 	               machine is rebooted, or an explicit index command such as 'mdutil -i' or 'mdutil -E' is
>> 	               run for the volume.
>> NOTE: Run as owner for network homes, otherwise run as root.
>> 
>> I am starting to wonder if there is another command we should be using, in place of mdutil?
> 
> As I implied before, I don't think there's an md* command or even a public API to add or edit the folders to exclude. Rather, I suspect that the Spotlight preference pane has some private interface to do the job.
> 
> I could probably figure out how to do that using the "defaults" command and tell you, but I won't, because the risk of corrupting that file and possibly breaking Spotlight for that volume is one I won't encourage. Figure it out yourself if you're willing to risk shooting yourself in the foot. Looking a bit at the executable for the preference pane, I don't quite see what it does (it doesn't seem to directly edit the .Spotlight-V100/VolumeConfiguration.plist file for the volume (I think that tree exists per-volume, not just one for the whole system), but I haven't looked closely to determine more), but it seems that it may at least take some precautions you might not - there seems to be some check for paths that might break (presumably Apple-supplied - they couldn't know what other apps do) apps that depend on Spotlight access to certain directories.
> 
> So I agree that MacPorts shouldn't exclude its noisy (with respect to Spotlight updates) directory automatically. If it's a performance problem, it's easily enough done through the preference pane.
> 

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