Re: The argument for fs assistance in handling archives (was: silent semantic changes with reiser4)

Linus Torvalds
2004-09-02T01:07:36Z

On Thu, 2 Sep 2004, Jamie Lokier wrote:
>
> This is where the file-as-directory metadata stuff is so potentially
> interesting. It's actually a nice interface that every program can see.

.. but you can _still_ do exactly this in a user-space library and
prototype it. Just take over "open" (and opendir/readdir), and you can do
so.

> To be fair, the whole thing could be prototyped (with glitches, but
> enough to demonstrate) in userspace, running everything through
> something like uservfs or even NFS, especially with file-as-directory
> being blessed at the VFS level.

I do believe that you can prototype it even without any kernel support.

This is why I want to have stronger reasons for real VFS support. I see
the Samba argument, and I buy that one, if only because it has such a high
consistency requirement (let's face it, people expect more guarantees of
their file servers than of most other things). But on the other hand, the
Samba guys apparently _are_ happy with "openat()", so they don't
necessarily need any normal namespace stuff.

And I suspect that a user-level prototype would show that what you
_really_ want may be something else altogether..

Linus