Re: silent semantic changes with reiser4

Jeremy Allison
2004-08-26T17:32:27Z

On Thu, Aug 26, 2004 at 02:49:56AM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> Spam <spam@tnonline.net> wrote:
> >
> > Yes, for example documents, image files etc. The multiple data
> > streams can contain thumbnails, info about who is editing the file
> > (useful for networked files) etc. Could be used for version handling
> > and much more.
>
> All of which can be handled in userspace library code.
>
> What compelling reason is there for doing this in the kernel?

Because without kernel support there is no way someone can
publish a new metadata type and have it automatically supported
by all application data files (ie. most apps ignore it, and only
apps that are aware of it can see it). Without kernel support
you have to have all apps agree on a data format. And
that's harder to do than getting linux kernel VFS engineers
to agree on things :-).

Jeremy.