If you opt for ‘Mac-only’ format, isn’t that sufficient to preserve everything you need in an archive?
extended attributes
Some files rely on these to work properly. What happens when you share such a file using your iCloud account? The answer isn’t simple, but here are full details.
The behaviour of quarantine flags, SIP flags, and the mysterious new com.apple.macl attribute, which never ceases to puzzle.
How does Catalina’s new privacy protection extend to folders such as ~/Documents? New information fills in detail.
Classic resource forks passed into Mac OS X, but were deprecated by Apple in 10.8. Now in Catalina they can stop working: is this a new security measure?
Xattrs are marvellous features of macOS, but unless a developer is aware of their lability and how to preserve them, they aren’t good places to store metadata of any importance.
Updates to two utilities to create and edit metadata in extended attributes, which work better with Spotlight search. Now compatible with Catalina.
Apple’s attitude to document metadata remains ambivalent. But macOS does offer good support for extended attributes to pass through iCloud, if you know how to access it.
Does using xattr flags disrupt Spotlight indexing, and how are those flags respected using different methods of copying a file?
So how can apps and users preserve file metadata using these xattr flags? Part of the solution is straightforward, but there’s a major limitation.
The Eclectic Light Company 