On Mon, 15 May 2006 18:43:39 +0200 Joerg Schilling wrote: > Roland Mainz <roland.mainz at nrubsig.org> wrote:
> > The XATTR files need to be accessible from the normal filesystem > > namespace (e.g. each file needs a proper parent (even if this is a file, > > but that does not hurt as seen in Reiser4 :-) )), otherwise the shell > > can only access them via weired helper applications. > I strongly object this idea. > XATTRs do not belong in the same namespace as filenames and what Reiser4 does > is just a result of the limited Linux development model. Note that you may > _add_ anything to Linux but you will not be able to force all other > programmers to modify their code in order to allow a better and more > orthogonal > behavior. For this reason, every implementor tries to find a way to implement > all > features in his own project. This development model sucks.... so J?rg I'm confused with your response the whole point of adding extensions like XATTR to the filename space is that it would force reprogramming only inside the system call implementations -- no user level reprogramming would be required the alternative of adding parallel universe system calls for each XATTR-like extension would force every user level application to reprogram to each XATTR-like extension, ultimately ending up with, at minimum, #syscalls * #extensions calls, and that doesn't address the issue of interactions between extensions what reprogramming does "force all other programmers to modify their code" refer to w.r.t. putting extensions in the filename space? (I'll condede that under either method backup/copy utilities might want to provide options to control how extensions are to be handled) -- Glenn Fowler -- AT&T Research, Florham Park NJ --
