Re: Reiser4 and ACLs

[David Masover <ninja@slaphack.com>]

Jonathan Briggs wrote:
> On Tue, 2005-08-16 at 00:19 +0400, Nikita Danilov wrote:
> 
>>Hubert Chan writes:
>> > On Sun, 14 Aug 2005 17:24:17 +0400, Nikita Danilov <nikita@clusterfs.com> said:
>> > 
>> > > Not exactly. As a matter of fact, ACL and EA support was already
>> > > implemented in reiser4. But it used standard xattrs API to interface
>> > > to the user-land, and it was decided that reiser4 should go
>> > > sys_reiser4() route instead. So, it was reaped.
>> > 
>> > Does this mean that file-as-dir has also been abandoned?
>>
>>Sorry, it seems I was too vague. It's exactly the opposite: standard
>>xattr API was abandoned in favour of accessing EAs and ACLs through
>>pseudo files. The latter method is not implemented yet, and I don't know
>>how stable sys_reiser4() API is currently. Hans is the proper person to
>>ask.
> 
> 
> There is no reason not to support the standard xattr calls,

Except time, money, and more important things to do.

Actually, Hans probably doesn't like the idea of supporting them at all, 
but even Hans has to accept that everyone won't rewrite apps for 
pseudo-files at once.

> whether it
> is done in-kernel or in the C library.  The pseudo files would also be
> good, but several programs already use the current xattr support.

Several programs already use Windows.  We do have Wine, but would you 
rather all the kernel hackers started hacking on making Wine more 
compatible instead of making Linux better?

> Namesys may not want to add the support themselves but I hope they do
> not reject contributed code for it.

Probably not, just make sure you fully understand what pseudo files are 
and what they do, and how you're going to fit the two together.  If the 
patch makes xattrs a completely separate namespace, you're probably 
going to get a "try again".