Re: reiser4 plugins

David Masover
2005-07-06T18:00:07Z

Horst von Brand wrote:
> David Masover <ninja@slaphack.com> wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>
>>Just don't allow user-created hardlinks inside either metafs (/meta) or
>>the magical meta directory inside files.
>
>
> And what is it useful for, after its advantage was that it was /exactly/
> like regular files &c, and now it is severely crippled?

The advantage was never that meta files look exactly like regular files,
but that they look enough like regular files that you can use existing
tools on them. Of course, there are some times when you want meta files
to look exactly like regular files, as in (I hate to bring it up again,
but...) zip files.

So, a zip file (/meta/vfs/some/zip/file/.../contents/) would allow
hardlinks between files inside the zipfile, but not outside of it. This
would be like creating a separate mountpoint for the zipfile's contents,
and doing "mount --bind" when a hardlink to the zipfile is created.

I'm not sure if we actually have to pretend it's a mountpoint, or if we
can just take the checking that mountpoints already do and generalize it.

Can you think of a way in which hardlinks are useful in /meta, in a
*general* way, instead of within a specific directory controlled by a
specific plugin?