App Sweep thoroughness

Yesterday in a DEVONtechnologies forum post I mentioned how Hazel's App Sweep was more thorough than AppZapper at finding auxiliary files for DEVONthink Pro Office. There was one notable exception: App Sweep missed ~/Library/PDF Services/Save PDF in DEVONthink Pro.scpt. I'm not sure why without details about how App Sweep works. Maybe it's excluding the PDF Services folder, which could be included in a future Hazel release? Or maybe there's some other fix to help App Sweep find that script? Thanks!

Actually, Hazel does scan that folder but all the examples I've seen before, apps put aliases in there that point back to themselves, which Hazel should pick up. I'll have to tweak the algorithm for this case.

And thanks for the heads up. In general, if anyone finds stuff like this, please report it. This type of thing is a guessing game and there will be cases that fall through the cracks. The more of these you report, the better I can tweak the algorithm to catch them.

Thanks for the response. There are other scripts that DEVONthink can optionally install but those would be hard to track down, e.g. in ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Safari.

I'll report anything else I notice that seems a good candidate for App Sweep to catch but is currently missing.

I've discovered more possible targets for App Sweep to look for.

When removing Fluid it found:

~/Library/Caches/com.fluidapp.Fluid
~/Library/Preferences/com.fluidapp.FluidInstance.*

… but missed:

$(getconf DARWIN_USER_CACHE_DIR)/com.fluidapp.*

There could be other apps using that latter cache directory parent (under /var/folders) that App Sweep currently misses.

Also, for some reason App Sweep copied all the Fluid-related support files to Trash instead of moving them. Turns out this is a more general problem; same thing happened when deleting AppFresh and its support files. Then when moving it back to /Applications and confirming the dialog to reinstall support files it threw up an error dialog and spit out these log messages:

Code: Select all: 2009-10-23 09:35:22.534 HazelHelper[232] Could not reinstall /Users/sjk/Library/Application Support/AppFresh/PersistentStore.sqlite from /.Trashes/501/AppFresh Support Files/Users/sjk/Library/Application Support/AppFresh/PersistentStore.sqlite. File already exists. 2009-10-23 09:35:22.536 HazelHelper[232] Could not reinstall /Users/sjk/Library/Caches/de.metaquark.appfresh/Cache.db from /.Trashes/501/AppFresh Support Files/Users/sjk/Library/Caches/de.metaquark.appfresh/Cache.db. File already exists. 2009-10-23 09:35:22.537 HazelHelper[232] Could not reinstall /Users/sjk/Library/Preferences/de.metaquark.appfresh.plist from /.Trashes/501/AppFresh Support Files/Users/sjk/Library/Preferences/de.metaquark.appfresh.plist. File already exists.

That's with Hazel 2.3.4 (v608) on my iMac G5 running 10.5.8.

Since I stumbled across the bug while only intending to report missing App Sweep targets I'm combining the two topics into one.

sjk wrote:$(getconf DARWIN_USER_CACHE_DIR)/com.fluidapp.*

There could be other apps using that latter cache directory parent (under /var/folders) that App Sweep currently misses.

Hmm, I always thought those were temp dirs that were cleaned out automatically but I could be wrong on that (can you find any definitive docs on that?). I'll look into it.

sjk wrote:Also, for some reason App Sweep copied all the Fluid-related support files to Trash instead of moving them. Turns out this is a more general problem; same thing happened when deleting AppFresh and its support files.

Odd. Is it only those two apps or is it any app you throw away? Did you see any log messages when the copy happened? Any permissions issues? Also, were the files moved to the trash on the same disk as the support files?

Mr_Noodle wrote:I always thought those were temp dirs that were cleaned out automatically but I could be wrong on that (can you find any definitive docs on that?). I'll look into it.

I don't know of any definitive docs but my understanding/experience is that only $(getconf DARWIN_USER_TEMP_DIR), aka $TMPDIR, is automatically cleaned out.

Is it only those two apps or is it any app you throw away?

I only checked with those two apps but my presumption is that it'll happen with any of them since the second one was just a semi-random pick. I'm not thrilled doing much testing that'll require restoring apps/prefs I'm actively using. Guess I could temporarily install some new ones that I'll want to delete later anyway.

Did you see any log messages when the copy happened? Any permissions issues? Also, were the files moved to the trash on the same disk as the support files?

Not suspicious log messages or permissions issues. The deleted applications are on a different volume than any support files for them under my home folder. In other words, /Users is a separate volume.

I'll check on another system where /Users is on the startup volume and report the results …

Having App Sweep scan in those cache and temp folders is easy enough. I'll need to poke around more to figure out whether it is necessary (mostly for the temp folder). I can't find where in the system it gets cleared. It does appear that no files in there pre-date my last reboot but I want to make sure.

Also, I downloaded Fluid but I can't get it to dump any cache files in that directory. I can create them on my own for testing but I thought it'd be nice to use a real world test.

As for the copy/move issue, email me as I might have a test program for you run to test things out. And yes, in general, to test App Sweep, it's a good idea to download some app you don't intend to keep around. Launch it and tweak some settings (to make sure you generate some preferences) and then throw it away. I do this all the time to test it myself.

Mr_Noodle wrote:Having App Sweep scan in those cache and temp folders is easy enough. I'll need to poke around more to figure out whether it is necessary (mostly for the temp folder). I can't find where in the system it gets cleared. It does appear that no files in there pre-date my last reboot but I want to make sure.

I wouldn't bother with $TMPDIR since it's getting auto-cleaned by the system (but I haven't figured out where/when yet, too). It's the unwanted cache files/directories that can permanently linger.

Also, I downloaded Fluid but I can't get it to dump any cache files in that directory. I can create them on my own for testing but I thought it'd be nice to use a real world test.

Maybe the current version doesn't use that cache directory? The SSB's I was deleting had been created with an earlier version. Maybe I can create a new one here later to test with.

As for the copy/move issue, email me as I might have a test program for you run to test things out.

Done. Thanks!

These should be addressed in the beta (see the beta forum). Give it a spin and post there with the results.