*BSD News Article 65158


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From: Adam Megacz <kalessin@netcom.com>
Subject: Re: Ideal filesystem
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> I don't understand why people are considering changes
> to the underlying filing system when it's fairly obvious
> that the answer to maintaining meta data lies in a well
> designed and written library.
> A good API for maintaining meta data will _free_ you from
..
> hosts in the metaopen() call.
 
> I haven't seen a good argument for streamed files yet
> that stands against the force of argument for putting the
> required functionality into a common library.

I have 3:

  1) Elegance. If EA's are part of the filesystem, I can use all
those fun preexisting apps (cat, tar, cp, mv, ls) to manipulate them.
Not to mention stuff like xfilemanager.

  2) Consistency. If the metadata is manipulated by a library, and I
rename or copy a file that has metadata attached to it, I've just
orphaned the metadata.

  3) The UNIX way (tm). It seems (IMHO) that integrating everything
into the filesystem is the UNIX way (tm). I really like it, and there
are others that do, too.

-- 
Adam Megacz <kalessin@netcom.com>
Website ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/ka/kalessin/adam.html
Linux - OS/2