Re: silent semantic changes with reiser4

Jamie Lokier
2004-08-26T16:58:18Z

James Bruce wrote:
> moving 1MB of attributes/streams just to change a 20 character
> author attribute seems a bit silly.

That's what we do now. Try editing an MP3's id tags.

> If it should be in userspace, we could take the OS-X approach of using
> directories for everything, and the "data" that would be in a hybrid
> directory-file is a specially named file under that directory. Programs
> for instance are actually directories, with the elf file underneath it.
> When you click on the "directory-program" in the gui it runs the
> associated elf file rather than opening the directory. I think that
> approach is promising, but so few unix programs have any indirection for
> file access it'd be hell to teach them all how it works.

The interfaces we've been talking about are very close to that. The
indirection is automatic: instead of a document (or program) looking
like a directory, it'll look like a file, and reading (or executing)
the file will do the indirection, with kernel control (and so
consistency and performance) via an appropriate flat<->structured
relation helper.

-- Jamie