/libinvisible

low-level .hidden support for Linux

Primary LanguageC++MIT LicenseMIT

libinvisible is a bit of magic to spread the semantics of Freedesktop ".hidden" files to the rest of your Linux environment.

More technically, libinvisible is an LD_PRELOAD shim that hooks readdir().

After installing libinvisible, GUI and command-line programs alike will find themselves unable to see any directory entries listed in a ".hidden" file in the same directory.

How do I use it?

  1. make install

  2. Put export USE_LIBINVISIBLE=1 somewhere convenient, like your bashrc. (Don't put it where it will affect system startup scripts!)

Hidden files should immediately stop being visible to any newly-launched process that inherits the env var. To get already-running processes to use libinvisible, you will probably have to reboot.

How do I stop using it?

libinvisible works by putting an entry in your /etc/ld.so.preload. You can remove this entry to restore normal behavior.