I like to use macOS's alias feature to not have to make redundant files. These aliases work great with Chrome and TextEdit. When I open them with vim, however, I get a giant messy file (presumably the way macOS encodes aliases). Is there a way to edit the actual file through an alias with vim?
MacOS – Is it possible to edit a macOS alias with vim
aliasmacosvi
Related Solutions
This still is possible via a work around.
The right-click contextual menu does not contain an option Make Alias for the Originals/Masters directories, but it does for subdirectories. The option Make Alias always shows in the menubar under File → Make Alias but is greyed out for the Originals/Masters directories.
Workaround
- Go to a subdirectory of Originals/Master in Finder.
- Create your alias, ⌘+L.
- Open the Info of the created alias folder, ⌘+I.
- Click the button Select new Original
- Press ⌘+⇧+G to enter a custom path.
- Enter your path, e.g.
/Users/my_name/Pictures/Aperture Library.aplibrary/Masters - Rename the Alias folder.
Definitely scriptable with terminal commands.
/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Print" ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist
Shows you the actual configuration for the dock.
Within the above file you need to modify the "persistent-others" array if you want to create a "file" alias.
This is done the following way:
/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "add:persistent-others:0 dict" ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist
If you want an application alias you will need to modify the "persistent-apps" array.
Once you make the changes and you are testing you need to do:
killall dock
to refresh the dock.
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Best Answer
macOS aliases are just normal files. macOS knows when an alias is being accessed and passes the right file along to the app. Since aliases are just normal files, other tools just open the alias file itself rather than reading the contents of the file and finding where it points to.
If you actually want a link to another file, you can create a symbolic link instead of using aliases: