Is this a Qt limitation?

I don't know. But when I use Paraview, I am able to access /Volumes -- see screenshot attached (looks like it is using a custom file dialog).

It looks like this has been an issue on mac for a long time:

https://bugreports.qt-project.org/browse/QTBUG-6875

As a workaround, creating a symbolic link in your home directory pointing to /Volumes lets you browse from there. The same thing works for /tmp, which is helpful when you want to save scratch data that will be cleared on a reboot.

cd
ln -s /Volumes .
ln -s /tmp .

Julien: do you know of any Qt level workarounds?

As suggested in QTBUG-6875, we might need to show hidden files.

Tried this:

diff --git a/Base/QTGUI/qSlicerDataDialog.cxx b/Base/QTGUI/qSlicerDataDialog.cxx
index b8f2967..a87297e 100644
--- a/Base/QTGUI/qSlicerDataDialog.cxx
+++ b/Base/QTGUI/qSlicerDataDialog.cxx
@@ -125,7 +125,8 @@ void qSlicerDataDialogPrivate::addDirectory(const QDir& directory)
{
bool recursive = true;
QDir::Filters filters =

• QDir::AllDirs | QDir::Files | QDir::Readable | QDir::NoDotAndDotDot;
• QDir::AllDirs | QDir::Files | QDir::Readable | QDir::NoDotAndDotDot
• | QDir::Hidden;
  foreach(QFileInfo entry, directory.entryInfoList(filters))
  {
  if (entry.isFile())

That does not work. However, I noticed that even without the QDir::Hidden flag, one can access the /Volumes directory simply by typing in the address bar at the bottom of the file dialog.

We can use QFileDialog::setSidebarUrls ( http://doc.qt.digia.com/qt/qfiledialog.html#setSidebarUrls ) to add the Volumes url in the sidebar on Mac. Does that seem like an appropriate solution?

I looked at ParaView's pqFileDialog following Andriy's note. From what I discern, it uses a native search and lists the directory as a row provided it meets certain conditions. ( https://github.com/Kitware/ParaView/blob/master/Qt/Core/pqFileDialogFilter.cxx )

Yes, the sidebar urls sounds like a better solution than what we have now.

Pushed fix to topic: https://github.com/sankhesh/Slicer/tree/2240-mounted-volumes-mac

Fixed in version r21519 ( http://viewvc.slicer.org/viewvc.cgi/Slicer4?view=revision&revision=21519 )

Concerning (0007510), it couldn't have been working, the dialog to change should have been instead be the one created in qSlicerDataDialogPrivate::addDirectory().
Namely, qSlicerStandardFileDialog::createFileDialog() should have been tweaked to really test the fix.

r21519 is an acceptable solution. However there is code duplication.
Please add the change only in qSlicerStandardFileDialog::createFileDialog()

Done. Fixed in r21521 ( http://viewvc.slicer.org/viewvc.cgi/Slicer4/trunk/Base/QTGUI/qSlicerFileDialog.cxx?r1=21521&r2=21520&pathrev=21521 )