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10.4: Use Adobe Creative Suite with case-sensitive HFS
Authored by: CatOne on May 16, '05 01:06:48PM

What made you select case sensitive HFS+ as your file system anyway? Note it's not a supported file system for OS X installs, so you may well run into other issues.

"The benefits are many for standard UNIX," such as what? Poorly written apps are the only ones that depend on case sensitivity of the file system, anyway.

And what an ugly workaround, creating a specific disk image for one particular app. I'd suggest you just re-install on a standard HFS+ partition, as Apple recommends you do.



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10.4: Use Adobe Creative Suite with case-sensitive HFS
Authored by: matt.simerson on May 16, '05 02:17:52PM
What made you select case sensitive HFS+ as your file system anyway? Note it's not a supported file system for OS X installs, so you may well run into other issues.
"The benefits are many for standard UNIX," such as what? Poorly written apps are the only ones that depend on case sensitivity of the file system, anyway.
And what an ugly workaround, creating a specific disk image for one particular app. I'd suggest you just re-install on a standard HFS+ partition, as Apple recommends you do.

It is true that using case sensitive HFS "can" cause problems for some Mac OS apps. That's because Mac apps were written for HFS, a case insensitive file system. However, you are wrong and naive on every other point.

Case sensitive IS a supported file system for OS X installs (on 10.4 Server).

The original poster is correct in that "case sensitive is extremely useful for stardard unix." It's especially useful for developers and many end users (think academic and scientific community) who want to run software written for unix systems. Unix systems traditionally have case sensitive file systems and it's not "poorly programmed" when software expects that.

Even if you agree that the vast majority of open source software is poorly programmed because of this, it still doesn't obviate it's usefulness. I've had issues using some extremely well written software on OS X because of case insensitivity. Apple has already seen and had to fix security issues due to them using software written for case sensitive file systems. They chose those programs (such as Apache) because they are authored so well.

Having Apple support using a case sensitive file system is A Very Good Thing. It increases interoperability and the ease of porting a vast array of open source and commercial software to OS X. It's a great option for developers. It's very easy for Mac OS developers to no longer assume the file system is case insensitive. As they remove those assumptions, it opens the doors to natively using alternative file systems such as AFS.

You comment on how "ugly" the workaround to this CS issue is. What's ugly is that it's necessary, and that's Adobe's fault, not the author of this post. What's truly ugly is suggesting that the fellow reformat his disk to solve the problem.



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10.4: Use Adobe Creative Suite with case-sensitive HFS
Authored by: Gigacorpse on May 16, '05 02:21:34PM

Get off your soapbox; you have added nothing to this hint with your idiotic response.



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10.4: Use Adobe Creative Suite with case-sensitive HFS
Authored by: Anidel on May 16, '05 03:27:17PM

Everything the response said was true. Case insensitive file systems are "poorly designed" (speaking only about the case-sensitiveness) file systems. Case insensitive ones are not. I would be very happy to have a choice of installing a case sensitive one. When I installed Tiger it gave me the option to use a case sensitive HFS file system and I was really tempted in using it. But then I thought about all those well designed apps that for ages relied on a poorly designed file system and that will not work on the new HFS.

The fact itself that Apple "patched" HFS to make it case sensitive is a sympton of them having recognized a mistake made many years ago. And trying to fix it.
New applications and new versions of old applications will now be aware that sooner or later they'll have to be case sensitive too.
And that's a good thing.


---
Anidel



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If you are going to reference Apple KB Articles...
Authored by: Dr. Galakowitz on Jun 17, '05 06:18:23PM

Check the DATE, PLEASE!

CatOne and high res, both of you have stated that Apple does not support Case Sensitive HFS booting on the client. In a word: WRONG! A year ago, yes, that was true.

High res, you have provide a link to a document to substantiate your claim.

May I refer you to the date on that KB article you referenced. Hmmm. Feb 6 2004. A year ago, it was only available and supported on the Server platform, so you could install it via the command line, but apple did not support it running on the client.

By referencing the kb article, are you trying to tell everyone here that KB article applies to Tiger, when Tiger didnt ship for another year? You have also stated there is NO way to reformat the disk in CS HFS+. There is, and it's called Disk Utility. It is available when formatting a disk, not erasing a volume.

Just because you think something is ugly or stupid, does not mean it is. For folks migrating from UNIX systems, HFSX is critical. Imagine having to tweak 15 years of code, just to move to a new box. For some developers, we could not migrate them to the Mac until this FS was available as a SUPPORTED option in the client OS. Why is 15 years of code base important to preserve? If it's being used on a system that might be in operation that long without the ability for upgrade, such as a satellite, there is a critical need for that code to work as the technology under it changes.

To set the record straight, poorly written apps are not the reason. Almost all of the UNIX world has been given the luxury of case sensitivity in their filesystems since the early days of system V. So because they took advantage of this feature, they are bad coders? Give me a break.

So since you both obviously don't understand why this is important and granted you may not have a need to support some mission critical system, here's the point: If Apple touts that Mac OS X is UNIX, then it has to look and breathe and act like UNIX. HFS+ does not. HFSX does. Developers such as Adobe have seed copies of the OS, long before it ships. Is there a failure in Apple Developer Relations for not highlighting this new feature? You betcha. Is there a failure in Adobe's expectations that not much has changed on the filesystem front? Ditto. So Apple is at fault for not shouting core filesystem changes from the rooftops and Adobe for not "fully exploring the beta." However, the end user is not at fault for wanting the mac to behave like a unix box if Apple touts it as a UNIX workstation replacement.

So when commenting on a hint, please remember that not everyone out there is using the computer in the way you are accustomed to, and that there are no stupid hints. If there is a way to tweak the system configuration ( and this includes using HFSX), there is probably a good reason to do so.



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