Does MacPorts depend on Spotlight?

[Richard L. Hamilton]

> On Nov 17, 2021, at 14:16, André-John Mas <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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