Resolving firmlinks in Python
I recently had the need to resolve firmlinks in python. For example given a path like /Applications/Safari.app, I needed to get /System/Volumes/Data/Applications/Safari.app.
Turns out there is not a single example of this anywhere online, so if you are in the same place as I am, here is an example of how to do that:
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| import fcntl | |
| import os | |
| path = '/Applications/Safari.app/' | |
| # MacOS-only fcntl command defined in xnu/bsd/sys/fcntl.h | |
| F_GETPATH_NOFIRMLINK = 102 | |
| # The documented max length of an fcntl buffer in python documentation. | |
| FCNTL_MAX_LENGTH = 1024 | |
| fd = os.open(path, os.O_DIRECTORY) | |
| full_path_bytes = fcntl.fcntl(fd, F_GETPATH_NOFIRMLINK, bytes(FCNTL_MAX_LENGTH)) | |
| full_path = full_path_bytes.decode('utf-8') |