Re: The argument for fs assistance in handling archives

Chris Dukes
2004-09-03T21:07:57Z

On Fri, Sep 03, 2004 at 09:30:38PM +0200, Spam wrote:
>
>
>
> > Helge Hafting <helge.hafting@hist.no> said:
>
> > [...]
>
> >> The only new thing needed is the ability for something to be both
> >> file and directory at the same time.
>
> > Then why have files and directories in the first place?
>
> Good point, we don't need them :) Directories are just a visible
> grouping of files to make it easier for the user to manage. But some
> things aren't really that intuitive with todays layout - especially
> for non-unix users.
>
> Just an example where the user needs to edit config file for some
> program. Where should he look?
> /etc/app.conf ?
> /etc/app/app.conf ?
> /etc/conf.d/app.conf ?
> /var/lib/app/app.conf ?
> and so on....
>
> Using file-as-dir isn't really that much of a change. It isn't those
> that will confuse people anyway.
>

If the non-computer literate user is expected to edit the config file,
a pretty interface that hides the internals from the user should be provided.
For the sake of power users, users that believe themselves to be power users,
and configuration changes on multiple systems.
1) Track the location of the config file with the native package management
system.
2) Keep a human readable/editable format.
3) Provide APIs or schema so that the files may be parsed for correctness,
or edited or created programatically.
4) Provide a tool that not only checks for a parseable file, but does
sanity checks such as (Does file exist).

I'm at a loss as to how any of this has anything to do with filesystems.
The closest I see is one implementation of the above (gconf2) happens to
use the filesystem for it's default hierarchical database backend.

As for developers that are too stupid/lazy to provide the GUI and meet
the other criteria... I suggest extensive use of cattle prods on
them as they attend an automata class.

--
Chris Dukes
Warning: Do not use the reflow toaster oven to prepare foods after
it has been used for solder paste reflow.