OS X High Sierra

Question

Hi!

Is there any reason why I should not upgrade my OS X to High Sierra? APFS is "Case Sensitive only" file system and I remember at some point Kyma (X?) needed a case insensitive filesystem to work with?

Yours, Anssi

Answer 1

As you've noted, Kyma does not work properly with a case-sensitive file system at this time.

Comments

I couldn't resist... I installed the upgrade to my laptop. Kyma 7 seems to work, but I  quess it's better to refrain from upgrading on my studio computer.

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Is your Mac's OS volume on a SSD, fusion, or conventional hard drive?

Answer 2

The first release of High Sierra only converts HFS+ volumes to APFS if that volume is on a pure SSD. Fusion drives are not currently supported (support was removed during the BETA), and normal electromechanical drives are optional (but debatable if they should be converted since APFS is optimized around solid state storage). So at this point in time systems running off an SSD will be forced to use APFS when upgraded to High Sierra. All others will be left as HFS+.

This is likely a short-term situation and Apple will eventually support Fusion drives. At some point we will no longer have a choice and all OS volumes will be APFS. But for now it looks like the case-sensitive issue can be avoid, unless one is "unlucky" to be running off a SSD :-)

We installed Kyma 7 on High Sierra during the BETA period and did not notice any issues. However it was running on HFS+ volumes.

Something to keep in mind if you have a mix of Macs running different versions of OSX. HFS+ is universally supported by Mac OS; APFS is not. Only High Sierra can access files on a APFS formatted volume.

Answer 3

I just realised that the SSD drive on my laptop was actually formatted as case-insensitive APFS! I though I read somwhere that APFS is always Case-sensitive, but it seems that this didn't change in the process.

Answer 4

“APFS, like HFS+, is case-sensitive on iOS and is available in case-sensitive and case-insensitive variants on macOS, with case-insensitive being the default. In macOS High Sierra, APFS is normalization-insensitive in both the case-insensitive and case-sensitive variants, using a hash-based native normalization scheme.Jul 10, 2017

Frequently Asked Questions - Apple Developer