Re: The argument for fs assistance in handling archives

David Masover
2004-09-03T00:47:04Z

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Steve Bergman wrote:
[...]
| In following this thread, I may be missing huge chunks of concept.

You are, but don't worry. You aren't the only one. (Before I get
assaulted for this, let me say that there are people on this list
smarter than me and I miss concept chunks quite frequently.)

| 1. The file as directory thing adds complexity that the administrator
| has to deal with. Symlinks are useful, but it's still aggravating to
| tar off a directory structure, take it somewhere, and then realize that
| all you have is links to something not in the archive because you didn't
| get your tar switches just right. Now we're talking about adding
| another set of "files which are not really files" to the semantics.
| More complexity. I'll take simplicity over some ivory tower ideal of
| "unified name space" any day.

You want simplicity? How does this strike you:
scp file/serialize daemon@bsd:~/file.img

You don't have to worry about "file is not a file". You don't have to
worry about fifos or device nodes. You don't have to worry about files
in files. In fact, you don't have to worry about any new kind of file
added, ever.

| 2. The use of multiple streams within files by Linux apps would make
| Linux as cross-platform unfriendly as MS is trying to be. Say these

The use of ext3 as a filesystem isn't cross-platform. Every disk-write
is platform-specific! We should all be using captive-ntfs instead!

Seriously, this isn't hard -- it's called a "library". And anything as
bloated as OO.org has got to already be modular enough to add this sort
of thing.

| features start getting used and you copy an OO.org document from a Linux
| box to a BSD box. It's broken. Of course, OO.org wouldn't use the
| streams in the first place because it would destroy their cross platform

If that was so, OO.org wouldn't use a GUI, because that isn't
cross-platform. They'd use a purely commandline interface, because that
is universal.
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