On 24 Jun 1998 21:40:07 -0000, "Stig HackVan" <stig@hackvan.com> said:
> I'd very much like to see something like the simple database functionality
> of the BeOS filesystem. I'm on a severe typing diet, however, so I'm
> unlikely to be able to do more than consult on the feature set and
> implementation.
> On BeOS, all files can have an arbitrary list of name/value pairs associated
> with them. These attributes can be globally indexed or not.
Fine for a new operating system, but remember that Linux is
Unix/POSIX, not BeOS compatible. That means that every single program
which moves, copies or archives files is expected to be just a
standard byte stream.
We already have solutions to most of the file attribute problems; they
are user-space rather than kernel-space solutions. Given that the
general rule is to place something into the kernel only if there is a
convincing argument why it should not be done in user space, I can't
see that we want to put such a database into the kernel. It would be
nice, sure, but do we really want to fork a branch in the Unix spec
and have to maintain our own completely incompatible versions of
everything from cp to tar, not to mention the impact on third-party
archive tools?
--Stephen
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu