> On Nov 17, 2021, at 14:16, André-John Mas <andrejohn....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> When looking at "System Preferences -> Spotlight -> Privacy", you can
> configure exclusions by folder.
>
> I had a look at the mdutil command and no reference to folders or paths is
> mentioned, when looking from macOS 12.0.1:
>
> Usage: mdutil -pEsa -i (on|off) -d volume ...
> mdutil -t {volume-path | deviceid} fileid
> Utility to manage Spotlight indexes.
> -i (on|off) Turn indexing on or off.
> -d Disable Spotlight activity for volume (re-enable using
> -i on).
> -E Erase and rebuild index.
> -s Print indexing status.
> -a Apply command to all stores on all volumes.
> -t Resolve files from file id with an optional volume path
> or device id.
> -p Publish metadata.
> -V vol Apply command to all stores on the specified volume.
> -v Display verbose information.
> -r plugins Ask the server to reimport files for UTIs claimed by the
> listed plugin.
> -L volume-path List the directory contents of the Spotlight index on
> the specified volume.
> -P volume-path Dump the VolumeConfig.plist for the specified volume.
> -X volume-path Remove the Spotlight index directory on the specified
> volume. Does not disable indexing.
> Spotlight will reevaluate volume when it is unmounted
> and remounted, the
> machine is rebooted, or an explicit index command such
> as 'mdutil -i' or 'mdutil -E' is
> run for the volume.
> NOTE: Run as owner for network homes, otherwise run as root.
>
> I am starting to wonder if there is another command we should be using, in
> place of mdutil?
As I implied before, I don't think there's an md* command or even a public API
to add or edit the folders to exclude. Rather, I suspect that the Spotlight
preference pane has some private interface to do the job.
I could probably figure out how to do that using the "defaults" command and
tell you, but I won't, because the risk of corrupting that file and possibly
breaking Spotlight for that volume is one I won't encourage. Figure it out
yourself if you're willing to risk shooting yourself in the foot. Looking a bit
at the executable for the preference pane, I don't quite see what it does (it
doesn't seem to directly edit the .Spotlight-V100/VolumeConfiguration.plist
file for the volume (I think that tree exists per-volume, not just one for the
whole system), but I haven't looked closely to determine more), but it seems
that it may at least take some precautions you might not - there seems to be
some check for paths that might break (presumably Apple-supplied - they
couldn't know what other apps do) apps that depend on Spotlight access to
certain directories.
So I agree that MacPorts shouldn't exclude its noisy (with respect to Spotlight
updates) directory automatically. If it's a performance problem, it's easily
enough done through the preference pane.
