Re: porting to alternate OSs and relational semantics

[Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com>]

Phil Frost wrote:

>My name is Phil Frost and I am looking at ReiserFS as a potential filesystem                                                        
>for an OS called Unununium (http://uuu.sf.net/) in the early stages of                                                              
>development.
>
Do you have funding from anywhere?  Are you private or university or?

> From the beginning, we have planned to make the filesystem an                                                          
>integral part of the system as a whole. Thus we came to many of the same                                                            
>conclusions as ReiserFS: the filesystem should be an efficient database.                                                            
>                                                                                                                                    
>Work had begun on a filesystem of our own making, but after reading about                                                           
>Reiser4 I came to realize that ReiserFS wasn't just another filesystem that                                                         
>performed better at doing the same useless FS stuff, but rather exactly what                                                        
>we wanted, only years advanced :-) So, I am now aiming to get the ReiserFS                                                          
>code working for our OS. Any information on how to proceed would be                                                                 
>appreciated.                                                                                                                         
>                                                                                                                                    
>Furthermore, because we are developing an entirely new OS, we aren't                                                                 
>restricted by backwards compatibility or tradition. I would like (and will                                                          
>definitely need, in order to sell this idea to the other members of the                                                             
>project) to see the database features of ReiserFS develop, in particular,                                                           
>relational semantics.                                                                                                               
>                                                                                                                                    
>I don't know what progress or ideas have been made in this idea, but as I                                                           
>see it, a traditional hierarchal layout is a subset of a relational                                                                
>database, only that the only usable relation is "child-of". Our primary goal                                                        
>was to allow information to be found quickly by a key other than the name,                                                          
>such as finding all music by "Pink Floyd" or all songs from "The Wall".  
>
Please read www.namesys.com/whitepaper.html, which describes the 
semantics intended for reiser6.

>                                                           
>                                                                                                                                    
>To this end I'd like to do whatever I can to assist. I'd rather contribute                                                          
>to ReiserFS than produce a redundant effort. Other members of the Unununium                                                         
>effort have expressed concerns about the suitability of ReiserFS to our task                                                        
>and the time it may take to mature. Any remarks you can make to quell their                                                         
>restlessness would be greatly appreciated and may convert a talented                                                                 
>developer to your cause :-)
>  
>
Reiser4 is getting installed on my desktop sometime this week, so I 
don't think you should worry about the time to mature, unless you mean 
the time required to implement semi-structured semantics on top of the 
existing storage layer.

>
>  
>
thanks kindly for your interest in ReiserFS

-- 
Hans