Hi, I would like to get some discussion going on this topic as it really is a point of concern for non-Linux users of GNOME...
According to Robert Love[1] the prospect of FUSE replacing GNOME VFS was well received at GUADEC. I was present, and took part from a Solaris standpoint, in the discussion about this at Alex's talk about the future of GNOME VFS. I certainly didn't think that it was well received - more a controversial change I would think. It seemed to me that there was a split in the room. OK, some people accepted that it is a possible solution to "legacy" applications that are not opensource, but also unlikely to ever even consider the possibility of using GNOME VFS - and I do tend to agree, from this perspective but not in the way that is being suggested, i.e. to replace GNOME VFS with FUSE. I don't see why we should push out a perfectly good GNOME VFS implementation, with a rich API, to be replaced with a POSIX based file API that would result in some weird uses of ioctl()s and the like to access meta-information. Not to mention the kernel context switching that would result from such calls. I makes more sense to me to fix/address the "concerns" that people have with the GNOME VFS API - and these mainly seem to be down to complexity - or a thinking that it's too difficult to use - where does this come from? If it's really like this, then it seems we need to provide a simple version of the API for people that need it. An other issue that was raised was the reliability of GNOME VFS, in that there was a risk of data-loss - this is surely a bug and should be verifiable through a thorough test-suite - if it still exists. I would think the most likely way that there could be a risk of data loss is in the realms of network based communication - and I can't see how FUSE would be any different here. Personally, I would prefer to see us move with FUSE layered on top of GNOME VFS as the solution for the legacy applications - why should GNOME apps have to suffer a base API like POSIX - which you have to admit is quite likely to be wrapped in a more "user-friendly" API again, since it'd be so complex to get simple meta-data or even decent error return codes, and we've back to where we started with another GNOME VFS later. I mentioned at GUADEC that there wasn't a FUSE implementation for Solaris - I was wrong, there is an Open Solaris project that is working on porting it[2] but given that it's GPL licensed it's highly unlikely that it will be included as a base Solaris component - and I would think this could be an issue for any commercial distribution where there are some proprietary elements in it (specifically anything that is licensed from a 3rd party under non-disclosure agreements). Thanks, Darren. [1] - http://rlove.org/log/2006070601 [2] - http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/fuse/ _______________________________________________ gnome-vfs-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-vfs-list
