Re: fistgen-0.1.1 released (linux-2.6 support)

[David Chow <davidchow@shaolinmicro.com>]

FiST is a stackable file system project, or you can say it is a file 
filtering project. fistgen has is a template-based file system 
development tool, and of couse runs at user space. But fs'es (C sources) 
which generated by fistgen run entirely in the kernel. You can write 
FiST file systems in C language without the need to bother kernel VFS 
integration or internal understanding , simple use FiST language macros 
to write file systems. For example, wrapfs (wrapper file system) is a 
simply fs on fs file system which is used for testing and demonstration 
the most basic stackable file system. Instead of mounting block devices, 
you mount directories. You can even develop encryption and other useful 
storage tools which requires fs-level integration but no need to hack or 
write fs from scratch .

Personally, I suggests newbies of fs development to work with FiST to 
get start on understanding VFS, as you can generate as many of fs'es as 
you like, it is useful for fs-devel beginners to play around with.

regards,
David Chow

Jamie Lokier wrote:

>Erez Zadok wrote:
>  
>
>>>where is the README or URL that describes what fistgen _is_?
>>>
>>>Your announcement is tailored such that only people who already know 
>>>what fistgen (version 0.1.1) is would want to download it.
>>>
>>>	Jeff
>>>      
>>>
>>I'll say again...
>>
>>   http://www.filesystems.org/
>>    
>>
>
>I'm with Jeff.
>
>A one line description of what fistgen is in the email would still be helpful.
>
>I'm not going to waste 30 seconds faffing about starting a web
>browser, if you can't be bothered to include a simple brief
>description.
>
>Like many people, I read lots of mails, quickly.  Yesterday it was
>nearly 2000.  I spent an average time of 2 seconds on each.  It's not
>possible to follow links to web sites on that time scale.
>
>If a quick scan says its interesting, I'll read more, maybe even break
>out the browser.  Something as trivial as an informative subject line
>or a brief description makes all the difference.
>
>This is constructive criticism, the point being please include a brief
>description of what the thing is when making public announcements.
>It's not hard, and very useful.
>
>In the interests of generosity, I've just had a look at
>www.filesystems.org.  From your email announcement, I had guessed that
>FiST and fistgen were some sort of userspace filesystem tool, like
>podfuk and a few others (including an NFS-based one I worked on).  But
>now I see that it's not.
>
>To be honest, from reading the main page of the web site I still don't
>understand what FiST is useful for at the moment.  As research it
>looks very promising.  Btw, does it offer the facility for lazy
>copy-on-write trees that was discussed on linux-kernel a few months
>ago -- useful for jails and cloned compilation trees?
>  
>