David Masover wrote:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Alexander G. M. Smith wrote:

| I agree, it needs to start with a period.  I'd also drop the idea
The namespace of beginning with one period is almost as full as that of
no periods, as mentioned before.  Our best bet for uniqueness is to call
it "reiser4metas" or something similar (.r4 or ..r4).

On the trail to uniqueness I've got an idea that I'd like to send out. How about we introduce two pseudo names: one very unique and the other short and simple.


The first unique name is like a URN:
foo/urn:namesys.com:reiser4:meta/uid

This is certainly unique enough for automated tools to rely on, but I wouldn't want to type it all the time.

The second name is short and easy:
foo/metas/uid

This is easy to use but could conflict. It would also be very useful to be able to lookup and dynamically change the short name.

cat urn:namesys.com:reiser4:meta/shortName
echo "..meta" > urn:namesys.com:reiser4:meta/shortName

I don't know if this echo would change the short name for the whole filesystem, a single object, or hierachical override. Also, it is interesting to wonder about this change persisting.



| of having a separate directory for metadata and just use a common That's what we were doing before. I didn't like it -- consider the use on files:

touch foo
chmod +x foo
cd foo/
ls

You either get 'foo/' or an error message.  You do not get a list of all
the pseudo files available.  I'm sorry, but 'cat ..pseudo' just isn't a
viable substitute for ls.

Also, the only disadvantage from the user's point of view is an extra '/'.

| I'm probably repeating myself, but the trouble is that the .meta
| directory isn't a full directory - you can't add attributes to it.
What kind of attributes would you want to add?  And btw, check out what
is currently 'metas/metas'.  I don't know if that's actually functional
or just read-only, but it works.  And I also see no reason why (in raw
uneducated theory) a plugin couldn't be implemented to make it into a
full directory for certain files (and thus losing no functionality for
other files).

| standard GUI file explorer to also check on attributes!  With a
| .meta directory, it seems good in a psychological organizational
| way but it breaks the object model.  That breakage will cause more

It doesn't have to.  Look at how the "pure object-oriented" languages
work.  Many of them make everything some subclass of "object" -- even
classes themselves.  A class is an object of type class.  I'm not sure
how this is implemented in code, but in concept it works fine.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
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=TYLn
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----





Reply via email to