From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Jack Stone Subject: Re: Versioning file system Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 20:06:19 +0100 Message-ID: <4678292B.6000804@hawkeye.stone.uk.eu.org> References: <46731169.2090002@hawkeye.stone.uk.eu.org> <4673182B.4090800@redhat.com> <46739E89.1080003@hawkeye.stone.uk.eu.org> <46781A5B.9090104@redhat.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, akpm@linux-foundation.org, viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk, hpa@zytor.com To: Chris Snook Return-path: Received: from host86-137-96-215.range86-137.btcentralplus.com ([86.137.96.215]:54236 "EHLO hawkeye.stone.uk.eu.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932351AbXFSTGx (ORCPT ); Tue, 19 Jun 2007 15:06:53 -0400 In-Reply-To: <46781A5B.9090104@redhat.com> Sender: linux-fsdevel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-fsdevel.vger.kernel.org Chris Snook wrote: > But what you're talking about *will* break userspace. If I do an ls in > a directory, and get pages upon pages of versions of just one file, > that's broken. If I tar up a directory and get a tarball that's > hundreds of times larger than it should be, that's broken. If you want > the files to be hidden from userspace applications that don't know about > your backup scheme, (and it sounds like you do) then use the existing > convention for hidden files, the prepended '.' This is the universal > sign for "don't mess with me unless you know what you're doing". The idea was that if you did an ls you would get the latest version of the file without the :revision_num. The only visible version would be the latest version, i.e. the current system would not change. The idea was that it would only show earlier versions if they were specifically requested with a :revision_num suffix. In that case the filesystem/kernel would need to recognise the suffix and return the earlier version of the file. The only userspace it would break is files with :num in their name, as I haven't seen any files like that I don't think its too big a problem but the way of specifiying revisions could be changed. Jack