In the mach-o version of Python on MacOSX, the macfs.FSSpec() 
library function fails for files that don't yet exist.

The problem is caused by (internally) using an FSRef to construct 
the FSSpec: FSRefs can't hold references to non-existent files, 
whereas FSSpecs can.

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This bug also cause macostools.copy() to fail, making the breakage 
larger than I thought :-(

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As the workaround is going to be both difficult to implement and incomplete I'm tempted to punt on this one. Difficult because we have to split the path in C, and we have to do /: substitutions on the last component; incomplete because we cannot cater for utf8/macroman differences and filenames > 32 characters.

If we punt on this we should make sure we phase out using fsspec's in the standard library in favor of the fsref calls.

Do you think this is an acceptable solution? How much work would it be?

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macostools.copy() has been fixed in rev. 1.16. mkalias()
still has the problem, though.

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Can this be closed since macfs has been removed?

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No, the problem still exists, also in Carbon.File, and probably is solvable. It has become less urgent, though, as FSSpecs are phased out in the core.

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Macfs is no longer used in the core. Anyone running into this problem in user code will have to create a workaround based on constructing the FSSpec by hand (i.e. with the (vrefnum, dirid, filename) interface).