So I was just setting up my heavily hacked Apache installation on Mac OS X Leopard when I ran into a little foo-pah. Since I was unable to get the mod_userdir to work correctly, I dumped all the files I needed into the default directory for the integrated webserver, and set an “alias” in my home folder to link to them for easy access. Next, I head into the terminal and try to ‘cd’ using my newly created alias when alas, it doesnt work. WTF, right? Isn’t it supposed to take me to where I wanted to go? Well, that when I looked at the ‘ls’ output. This is what I got with the Finder-created alias:
jBook-Pro:~/Sites john $ ls -l total 1024 -rw-r--r--@ 1 john admin 0 Oct 30 00:23 SMI drwxr-xr-x 6 john staff 204 Oct 24 20:09 images -rw-r--r-- 1 john staff 2628 Oct 24 20:09 index.html drwxr-xr-x 39 john staff 1326 Oct 26 21:35 johnluetke.net
See the line for the alias “SMI”? It’s a file, not a true alias. C’mon Apple, OS X is supposed to be UNIX, not some bastardized imitation. Why are you storing the path to the desired location in a file that only the Finder can interpret, and not as a soft link? Why doesn’t the Finder create a “ln -s” type alias. Jeez…
jBook-Pro:~/Sites john $ ls -l total 1024 -rw-r--r--@ 1 john admin 0 Oct 30 00:23 SMI -> /Library/WebServer/Documents/SMI drwxr-xr-x 6 john staff 204 Oct 24 20:09 images -rw-r--r-- 1 john staff 2628 Oct 24 20:09 index.html drwxr-xr-x 39 john staff 1326 Oct 26 21:35 johnluetke.net