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MaxMenus and Finder replacement
Authored by: bluehz on Jan 29, '03 01:28:32PM

Anyway to get other apps to recognize Path Finder (aka SNAX) as Finder instead of the Finder? For example I use MaxMenus CMM religously - but if chose something from one of the menus MaxMenus - it opens the Finder.



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Full finder replacement using Path Finder
Authored by: adodd on Feb 12, '03 05:20:48PM

This may (will likely) cause ill effects (especially during stystem updates) and does cause some minor functionality to break, but i've wholly replaced my Finder with Path Finder by doing this and have noticed a slight speed improvement over running both the Finder and Path Finder (I'm using 10.2.3 on a Pismo/500 btw):

1. used Stuffit to make a backup of /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app
2. opened the Terminal
3. DELETED the original Finder:
sudo rm -R /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app
4. made a symbolic link to my Path Finder app in place of the Finder:
sudo ln -s /Applications/Path\ Finder.app /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app

Now, this used to work fine in 10.1 and below, but I noticed it wasn't working, so I started digging around and saw that the Finder's process was actually referring to a component within the Finder.app package. A "ps -aux | grep Finder" on an unmodified 10.2.3 box showed the process name as:

/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/MacOS/Finder

Therefore, I did the following:

5. I made a symbolic link to the actual Path Finder executable within the package to be the same name as the Finder's:
sudo ln -s /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Path\ Finder /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Finder

This now not only made MacOS launch Path Finder isntead of the Finder, it also made thing such as clicking on folders dragged to my Dock open up in Path Finder.

Some notes:
-- In the commands, remember to escape any spaces, such as in the Path Finder name. This is done by either enclosing the whole path in quotes, or using a backslash:
"/Applications/Path Finder.app" or /Applications/Path\ Finder.app
-- You'll want to restore the Finder.app from your stuffit archive before running any MacOS system update . . .

My caveat thus far is:
-- Doing this, I've noticed my Login Items don't launch. Annoying but I'm fine with that.



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