Re: interface to ask is a file is hidden

[Josef Bacik <jbacik@redhat.com>]

On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 10:00:28PM +0200, Nicolò Chieffo wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 03:21:04PM -0400, Josef Bacik wrote:
> 
> > What files are determined as "hidden" is completely up to the application, and
> > not the filesystem.  Every linux filesystem is going to return all entries in a
> > directory when you do a readdir, and then it is up to the app to cull which
> > entries it doesn't want.  Having the fs/vfs arbitrarily decide which files are
> > "hidden" and shouldn't be returned via readdir is not the correct way to tackle
> > this problem, it should be decided via the application.
> 
> Ok, maybe I was not clear in my request
> 
> As if it's a way to get the size of a file, and this way is common to
> all filesystem (tell me if I'm wrong), we request a common way to ask
> if the file is hidden.
> So that the GIO code won't look like this
> 
> if (filesystem_is_ext3(fs))
>     hidden=ext3_get_hidden(file);
> else if (filesystem_is_fat16()fs)
>     hidden=fat16_get_hidden(file);
> else if (filesystem_is_fat32(fs))
>     hidden=fat32_get_hidden(file);
> else if (filesystem_is_ntfs(fs))
>     hidden=ntfs_get_hidden(file);
> else if (filesystem_is_new_filesystem_just_invented(fs)
>     /* oops! no way to get if a file is hidden because the maintainer
> didn't implement it */
>     hidden=FALSE;
>
> 
> If there is a common interface to do this we will gain 2 things
> 1) all filesystem must implement a way to get the hidden attribute
> 3) the application VFS must not know every filesystem type to support
> hidden files
> 2) much simpler code in application VFS, that might look like this:
>     hidden=get_filesyste_interface(fs)->get_hidden(file)

Oh ok I see what you are saying, sort of like chattr for ext3, only globally.
Doesn't sound like a terrible idea to me, but I will defer to the more
experienced people on this list.

Josef
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