Resolve macOS aliases when accessing ~/.ipfs/config

[dullbananas]

Checklist

• My issue is specific & actionable.
• I am not suggesting a protocol enhancement.
• I have searched on the issue tracker for my issue.

Description

If the config file is a symbolic link to a file in another location, IPFS says that it's not a valid json file instead of using the linked file

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[guseggert]

Symlinks should work fine here, can you provide reproduction steps?

[dullbananas]

In macOS:

1. Move the config file to a different location
2. Create an alias of the config file
3. Move the alias to ~/.ipfs
4. Rename the alias to "config"
5. Restart IPFS

If I instead use ln -s command, it instead causes the IPFS status to say "IPFS has Errored" instead of showing an error message.

[guseggert]

If by "alias" you mean you created an alias in Finder using File -> Make Alias, then those are not symbolic links, they are "bookmarks". They're a special file format, and the only supported way to read them is using special MacOS libraries (specifically, NSURL in the Foundation framework).

go-ipfs would have to link against Foundation and keep that maintained as the APIs evolve (this used to be FSResolveAliasFile. Since this is the first time someone has asked for this, we're not going to take on the maintenance burden of something like that.

A simple workaround would be to use a proper symlink, ln -s ~/config-copy ~/.ipfs/config, which go-ipfs resolves.