Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 07 Sep 2004 12:31:20 -0700 | From | Hans Reiser <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH - EXPERIMENTAL] files with forks in the VFS |
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Neil Brown wrote:
>On Sunday September 5, reiser@namesys.com wrote: > > >>Neil Brown wrote: >> >> >> >>>As a followup to the multi-branching threads about reiser4, I would >>>like to present this patch for discussion and exploration. >>>It implements files with fork (which are quite different to files that >>>provide different views via a subdirectory structure). >>> >>> >>> >>> >>How are they different? Having a distinguished file is consistent with >>the reiser4 approach. >> >> >> > >They are different at least in my perception. It is possible that a >common abstraction and a common implementation could support them >both, though I am slightly sceptical. > >On the one hand, you have a name space within a file which provides >access to information that is not part of that file but is only >loosely associated with it: an icon for a desktop app, documentation >for a program, a collection of fonts that a document uses. > >On the other hand, you have a name space within a file which provides >alternate views onto information that already exists within that >file: "unzip" which presents the file uncompressed, "tar" which >explodes a tar achieve, "tag" which shows tags in a multi-media >file. "elf" which exposes sections of an ELF executable. > >In the first case, the subordinate files should clearly be writable, >and should be backed up along with the main file. >In the second case, it is not clear that subordinate files should or >could be writable in general (though there may well be specific >cases), and the data does not need to be backed up. > > After the file compression plugin we should consider creating a directory compression plugin for directories with lots of small files....
>In the first case, the extra semantic only applies to files, not >directories (allowing a directory to have extra streams is nothing >new). >In the second case, the extra semantic should apply to directories as >well (as there may we be different views you might want on a >directory). > > I don't understand the paragraph above. Can you say with fewer indirections (e.g. define extra semantic)?
>NeilBrown > > > >
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