On Mon, 2007-08-20 at 08:47 +0000, jsnx wrote: > On Aug 17, 5:06 am, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (erik quanstrom) wrote: > > > They already have synthetic file systems built into NT! > > > > i think it's worse thank that. attributes and their ilk essentially > > add methods to a filesystem. > > That's overstatement -- attributes add 'user defined' types to the > filesystem, but that's not the same thing as giving each filesystem > object procedures. It might require polymorphic versions of ls, cat, > &c. -- but probably not, since the extra fields aren't of interest to > them. > > I've seen a lot of criticism of extended attributes on this thread, > but no one has stepped up with a solution that addresses the problem > they solve. Application specific data should go in the file -- we all > agree about that. The file's position in the heirarchy is modeled by > directories, which also carry OS specific metadata -- permissions, > ownership. But where do the oddball intermediaries put their metadata?
If that's the only need that can justify extended file attributes my personal reaction would be to quote Al Viro (who, I believe, was paraphrasing Ken, but I'm not certain): "Out-of-band == should be on a separate channel..." To me extended attributes are no better than ioctls and I hope we all share a certain deep and profound feeling towards them. One last observation. I would argue that the very same reason that makes symlinks semi-interisting on UNIX-like systems makes extended attributes pop-up in the same context as well: it is difficult to manipulate your personal file namespace there and create these "separate channels" on demand. Thanks, Roman.
