From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from mail-oi0-f44.google.com ([209.85.218.44]:34418 "EHLO mail-oi0-f44.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752993AbdGHToz (ORCPT ); Sat, 8 Jul 2017 15:44:55 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <2863583A-79F1-4998-8AC4-1C4C9D4C060F@dilger.ca> References: <20170706152304.GA10584@infradead.org> <149935261019.29744.8564287571048506851.stgit@warthog.procyon.org.uk> <149935262759.29744.6299062653432480230.stgit@warthog.procyon.org.uk> <31934.1499357651@warthog.procyon.org.uk> <2863583A-79F1-4998-8AC4-1C4C9D4C060F@dilger.ca> From: Linus Torvalds Date: Sat, 8 Jul 2017 12:44:54 -0700 Message-ID: Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/2] afs: Add metadata xattrs To: Andreas Dilger Cc: David Howells , Christoph Hellwig , Alexander Viro , linux-fsdevel , Linux API , linux-afs@lists.infradead.org, Linux Kernel Mailing List Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Sender: linux-fsdevel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Thu, Jul 6, 2017 at 11:27 AM, Andreas Dilger wrote: > > IMHO, xattrs are a fairly reasonable interface for accessing filesystem-specific > attributes of a file that do not have generic equivalents on other filesystems. > I can't see there being much value to having AFS-specific syscalls, and xattrs > also are more easily accessed by generic userspace tools than ioctl() calls. Yeah, I think attributes are likely much better than some random crazy ioctl interface. They can be listed with generic tools, and have various scripting interfaces in ways that ioctl's do not sanely have. And people tend to be encouraged to use good descriptive interfaces due to attributes having *names* instead of numbers. That said, if these things have some actual generic cross-filesystem meaning, then some ad-hoc fs attribute might be debatable. It might still be an attribute, but perhaps better in an actual generic namespace. I haven't looked at these particular attibutes yet, though. Linus