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I could be wrong...
Authored by: madmizzen on Dec 28, '01 03:51:10AM

as i don't have the gdb binary that is mentioned in the article, maybe it is on the developers cd?. But to find the defaults for Cocoa apps i have been just using the defaults reader/writer that is included in OSX.

[term prompt]% defaults read com.apple.mail

man defaults for all the details.

Of course since i don't have gdb, i may very well be mistaken.



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I could be wrong...
Authored by: Anonymous on Dec 28, '01 02:34:07PM

That won't tell you *all* the defaults; only the ones that the app has explicitly changed.

A properly written Cocoa application will register a set of default values that effectively provide the "default" defaults to be used by the app. These values are not written into the defaults database. When the app changes a particular default's value, that new value will be written and will be accessible in the manner described.

(Yes, gdb is on the developer CD)

However, defaults do not have to be registered, either. To truly find all of the defaults an application ever looks for, you need to modify the defaults subsystem to log every default as it is accessed. This will catch *all* defaults, including ones that are never registered.

It isn't hard to do-- but you do need to compile a small hunk of code to make it work. If anyone is interested, send email and I can write up a brief article on how it is done.



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