iLife is a pig

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about a relatively new space shortage on my laptop system.

Since then, I've found one major contributor in GarageBand.

Some time ago I posted to MacInTouch asking whether anyone knew of a way to store the contents of the /Library/Application Support/GarageBand folder - all 1.8 GB of it - on a different volume to save space on the startup volume.

No-one responded at the time, and I did various experiments with aliases, all to no avail - GarageBand simply wouldn't have it. However, in today's Notes and Tips you provided a link to the University of Utah's Crappy Apps page, where I found the solution I was after: a symbolic link. On that page it's given as a workaround for a security issue in a lab full of students, but a simpler version works just as well for me just to save space.

All I did was copy the entire GarageBand folder from Application Support to an external volume (which I happen to call 'Podule'), then put the symlink in the Application Support folder using Terminal:

cd "/Library/Application Support"
ln -s /Volumes/Podule/GarageBand GarageBand

Not quite the same thing as an alias, and GB seems perfectly happy with it, and I've reclaimed the best part of 2 GB on my startup volume. I hope this is some help to someone else.

This is Apple at it's best (and worst). Nearly 2 Gigs of user data (good stuff!), tossed onto the startup device. Once upon a time, applications could live anywhere and the data could live elsewhere. While still possible under OsX, many vendors assume root disk installation, Apple foremost among them.

While we're at it, iDVD could use a serious diet (or at least let me put it in my user directory). It has a 1.8 G Resources directory in the application bundle. Good grief.

Anyway, after some twiddling around, I once again have 4 Gigs of space available on my boot volume after a restart and am no longer up against a wall.