[BUG] optimize: silent exit on permission denied during App State Cleanup

[liamchalcroft]

Describe the bug

mo optimize crashes silently with exit code 1 during "App State Cleanup" when it encounters a .savedState directory that requires Full Disk Access permissions. Instead of skipping the protected directory and continuing, the script terminates.

Steps to reproduce

1. Run command: mo optimize
2. Script proceeds normally through "DNS & Spotlight Check" and "Finder Cache Refresh"
3. Script crashes during "App State Cleanup" when encountering a permission-denied directory

Expected behavior

The script should gracefully skip directories it cannot access due to permission restrictions and continue with the remaining optimization tasks.

Debug logs

mo optimize --debug

Debug output

[DEBUG] === App Saved State Cleanup ===
[DEBUG] Remove old application saved states
[DEBUG] Method: Find and remove .savedState folders older than 30 days
[DEBUG] Location: /Users/liamchalcroft/Library/Saved Application State
[DEBUG] Expected outcome: Reduced disk usage, apps start with clean state
[DEBUG] Risk Level: LOW, Old saved states, apps will create new ones
[2026-02-09 11:48:26] DEBUG: Removing: /Users/liamchalcroft/Library/Saved Application State/net.maxon.appinstaller.savedState
[2026-02-09 11:48:26] DEBUG: get_path_size_kb: Failed to get size for /Users/liamchalcroft/Library/Saved Application State/net.maxon.appinstaller.savedState (returned: )
[2026-02-09 11:48:26] DEBUG: Permission denied: /Users/liamchalcroft/Library/Saved Application State/net.maxon.appinstaller.savedState, may need Full Disk Access

Environment

Mole version 1.25.0
macOS: 26.2
Architecture: arm64
Kernel: 25.2.0
SIP: Enabled
Disk Free: 11Gi
Install: Homebrew
Shell: /bin/bash

Additional context

The safe_remove function appears to fail in a way that causes the set -e flag to terminate the script, rather than catching the error and continuing. The problematic directory is net.maxon.appinstaller.savedState which has restricted permissions.

[spider-yamet]

@liamchalcroft @tw93 May I pick up this issue?
Hope this project is open for contribution.

[tw93]

@spider-yamet Absolutely, go ahead

[spider-yamet]

@tw93 could you please review my PR?

Regards

[tw93]

@liamchalcroft @spider-yamet

Thanks for the detailed report, and sorry for the trouble.

This is now fixed on main via PR #440:
#440

Root cause was safe_remove returning non-zero under permission-denied paths, which could terminate mo optimize under set -euo pipefail. We now explicitly tolerate that failure path in both:

• App Saved State cleanup
• Finder/QuickLook cache refresh

So Mole will skip restricted entries and continue the rest of the optimize workflow.

I also added regression coverage for the same silent-exit pattern in cache refresh to prevent this from coming back. Thank you again for reporting this.

You can try with

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tw93/mole/main/install.sh | bash -s latest