exiftool not using $PATH to find setfile?

[Jan Steinman]

I have an old, extensively upgraded Mac Pro that won't install anything newer than MacOS 10.15.7, even with patch kits.

This means my install of developer tools (done long ago) didn't include /usr/bin/setfile, and attempting to run xcode-select --install tells me xcode-select: error: command line tools are already installed, use "Software Update" to install updates. And Software Update refuses to update Xcode unless I also update my OS. So I cannot assign the pseudo-tag -FileCreateDate.

I do have /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Tools/SetFile. But attempting to link it to /usr/bin/setfile results in ln: /usr/bin/setfile: Read-only file system, even with sudo or as root. System Integrity Protection is disabled.

I suppose I could do something tricky to mount that file system read-write, but I was easily able to ln -s Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Tools/SetFile /usr/local/bin/setfile with no trouble, without even sudo.

But when I try to run exiftool "-filecreatedate=1950:10:26 00:00:00" file.png I get

Code Select Expand

Warning: Error 32512 running "/usr/bin/setfile" to set FileCreateDate - file.png
    0 image files updated
    1 files weren't updated due to errors
So, it appears that exiftool isn't respecting the $PATH variable? Is there any way around this, besides something like booting up some other partition, mounting my boot disk read-write, and properly linking in /usr/bin/setfile?

Thanks in advance for your help, and sorry that this seems to me mostly a MacOS configuration issue... I can understand why you would want an absolute path for executables you run...

[Phil Harvey]

Yes, ExifTool requires setfile to be in /usr/bin.

The easy fix is to modify lib/Image/ExifTool/MacOS.pm (line 384) to change the setfile path.

- Phil