From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Christer Weinigel Subject: Re: The argument for fs assistance in handling archives Date: 02 Sep 2004 20:38:19 +0200 Sender: linux-fsdevel-owner@vger.kernel.org Message-ID: References: <20040826150202.GE5733@mail.shareable.org> <200408282314.i7SNErYv003270@localhost.localdomain> <20040901200806.GC31934@mail.shareable.org> <20040902002431.GN31934@mail.shareable.org> <413694E6.7010606@slaphack.com> <4136A14E.9010303@slaphack.com> <4136C876.5010806@namesys.com> <4136E0B6.4000705@namesys.com> <14260000.1094149320@flay> Mime-Version: 1.0 Return-path: In-Reply-To: <14260000.1094149320@flay> List-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: "Martin J. Bligh" Cc: Hans Reiser , Linus Torvalds , David Masover , Jamie Lokier , Horst von Brand , Adrian Bunk , viro@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk, Christoph Hellwig , linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Alexander Lyamin aka FLX , ReiserFS List "Martin J. Bligh" writes: > > For 30 years nothing much has happened in Unix filesystem semantics > > because of sheer cowardice > > Or because it works fine, and isn't broken. I've heard the same argument a lot of times. People complaining that Unix is so seventies because it sticks to the old boring philosophy of everything is a file and that a file is a stream of bytes, nothing more. Modern operating systems such as VMS with basic database handling in the OS itself, or MacOS or NT with named streams is so much more modern. Why don't we get with the times? It may be because just because of the simplicity it's fairly easy to use, harder to break och does one thing well. If you want structured storage, use a database, on top of the low level primitives, or use multiple files in a directory. Why complicate things? /Christer -- "Just how much can I get away with and still go to heaven?" Freelance consultant specializing in device driver programming for Linux Christer Weinigel http://www.weinigel.se