NCutil.py can cause Do Not Disturb to be unset

[gregneagle]

Steps to reproduce:

In Mavericks:
Set Do Not Disturb to On by pulling down the Notification Center from the menu bar
Use an NCutil.py command that alters NC settings.
Check the state of "Do Not Disturb" -- it's off again.

Yosemite does not seem to have this issue.

[gregneagle]

This is triggered by the killall NotificationCenter that NCutil.py does after making a change. You can replicate the issue by turning on Do Not Disturb and then doing killall NotificationCenter.

This might not be fixable; at the very least a warning should be in the READ ME.

[jacobsalmela]

I added it to the README. I wonder if we can just use the defaults to read and write the value to stay what it is.

defaults read $HOME/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.notificationcenterui.*.plist doNotDisturb

0 is returned if it is off
1 if it is enabled

but this also uses a unique ID. The command above just uses a * but the real .plist has a name like com.apple.notificationcenterui.030C2F1F-D406-F25E-75A7-1C6C1865DE3E.plist

I'm sure there is a way to do it via a Python library, but I'm not familiar enough for that. I would probably just make a call out similar to how it's done for the killall NotificationCenter command.

[gregneagle]

One uses the -currentHost flag to read and write ByHost preferences:

defaults -currentHost read com.apple.notificationcenterui

There are CFPreferences methods that can be called from Python to the same effect.

But being able to read/write this preference is not sufficient -- in Mavericks, the value there is never updated to match the UI (at least in my testing).

[gregneagle]

In Mavericks:

% defaults -currentHost read com.apple.notificationcenterui
{
    doNotDisturb = 0;
    doNotDisturbMirrored = 1;
}

Now I pull down the Notification Center menu and enable Do Not Disturb. Then:

% defaults -currentHost read com.apple.notificationcenterui
{
    doNotDisturb = 0;
    doNotDisturbMirrored = 1;
}

No change. Values change as hoped/expected in Mountain Lion and Yosemite...