Metadata deleted from files in integrated mode

[crenz]

MacOS uses extended attributes to store certain metadata in files. The MountainDuck documentation states that this metadata can be kept by enabling a hidden flag.

However, even when enabling this hidden flag, there are two bugs that I encountered:

1. Existing metadata already present remotely is ignored.

2. New metadata gets deleted immediately after creation.

Steps to reproduce 1)

• Set flag as described in documentation. Verify flag is set correctly:

 % defaults read io.mountainduck fs.filenames.metadata.enable
false

• Connect a WebDav share using the Finder
• Create a folder Test. Set metadata like tag color or folder icon
• Open the same WebDav share in MountainDuck
• Verify in Finder that tag color and folder icon do not appear on Test
• Verify in Terminal that ._Test containing the metadata exists:

% ls -la ._Test
-rw-------  1 user  staff  4096 23 Feb. 18:54 ._Test

• Verify in Terminal that metadata is not set:

 % xattr -l Test
com.apple.provenance:
 %

Steps to reproduce 2)

• Set flag as described in documentation. Verify flag is set correctly:

 % defaults read io.mountainduck fs.filenames.metadata.enable
false

• Create directory, set flags using the following commands, verify that once folder icon is set, meta data disappears completely:

 % mkdir Test
 % xattr -l Test
com.apple.provenance:
 % xattr -w -x com.apple.FinderInfo "00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 04 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00" Test
 % xattr -l Test
com.apple.FinderInfo:
com.apple.provenance:
 % xattr -w "com.apple.icon.folder#S" \{\"sym\":\"figure.2.and.child.holdinghands\"\} Test
 % xattr -l Test
com.apple.provenance:
 %

Expected behavior

1. When opening WebDav file shares with MountainDuck, metadata should appear in Finder in the same way as it does when opening with the Finder directly

2. When setting attributes in a MountainDuck-managed directory, attributes should stick the same way as they do for non-MountainDuck-managed directories. Repeating the same steps above on e.g. the Desktop results in the following result:

Desktop % xattr -l Test
com.apple.FinderInfo:
com.apple.icon.folder#S: {"sym":"figure.2.and.child.holdinghands"}

Desktop

macOS Tahoe 26.1

[dkocher]

I can confirm that we lack proper handling of extended attributes or labels and do not sync these with the storage provider in general. We are looking into possible options but support may be limited to Integrated connect mode in a future version.