[MacPorts] #49559: nepomuk-core can't be installed on a case-sensitive system (was: neponuk can't be installed on a case-sensitive system)

[René J.V. Bertin]

On Friday September 30 2016 10:10:40 Lawrence Velázquez wrote:

> So users would have to have this disk image mounted at all times, just
> in case they ever want to use anything installed by MacPorts?

Yes, but that can be completely transparent. The image can be mounted at an appropriate time during the boot sequence, possibly on-demand by launchd. And it can be configured not to show up as a volume on the desktop.
Use a dynamically sized (sparse) disk image, and you get very close to ZFS dataset.

> Your moralizing is not appreciated. Cut it out.
> Rest assured, "MacPorts" does not agree with your PoV on anything.

Your aggressiveness and overgeneralisation aren't appreciated either, cut that out too.

> On Friday September 30 2016 16:09:43 Sierk Bornemann wrote:
> > case sensitive per default, and relating Sierra so far is case
> > sensitive-only

I don't understand that; 10.12 installs to a case-sensitive HFS filesystem? Does it actually convert existing disks?

> > (when, if at all case-insensitity will be implemented,
> > only Apple knows).

I consider this good news, possibly the best thing (= with the most day-to-day usefulness) yet I've read about APFS (ApFS?! :)), together with "space sharing" if that's indeed comparable to ZFS datasets.
Case-insensitivity for Apple's target users doesn't have to be implemented at the FS level, I think. The user interface can provide natural language search facilities and handle mismatches in case transparently in the rare cases where you actually get to type in a filename to be opened without backup from a GUI that shows the matching filenames.

In fact, it should be possible to provide low/FS-level support to mimick the behaviour of case-insensitive HFS on top of actual case-sensitivity. If a file or path doesn't exist in the exact spelling, check if it exist disregarding case and if so use that instance. You'd probably not want to do that for creation, though :)

R.