?
Vladimir Dergachev writes:
>
>
> Actually we already have something similar:
>
> files and stat call. You can think of the contents of the file
> and stat information as symmetrical instead of asymmetrical as they
> are now. the fact that stat information is updated by the kernel doesn't
> change anything. We have /dev/?? files, we have /proc files - so what ?
>
> changing stat is good because
> 1. doing stat takes a long time as it is (do ls -l on a large
> directory)
> 2. stat breaks tar as it is. (well I am pushing it a little bit here..
> the fact is that tar isn't sufficient for "untar and run" approach.
> So Xfree uses preinstall.sh and postinstall.sh scripts and people made
> cpio that does these things better)
>
> A straightforward suggestion would be to change sematics from
>
> stat(filename, buf)
>
> to something like
>
> int open_stat(filename,char *key)
>
> so when key=NULL or "" it just opens filename,
> if key="stat" it allows you to read stat info
> and when it's something else it tries to perform an appropriate action.
>
> This doesn't even have to be fully kernel based solution (and probably
> shouldn't) A daemon process and userspace library (maybe with some kernel
> support later) will do fine.
>
> In part similar things has already been implemented:
>
> filename#tar in kde means to display tar file as directory
> this translates cleanly to "use tar filter to produce information
> requested on open_stat(filename,"tar") if the file is a tar archive,
> otherwise say that this information does not exist"
>
> Similar things could be done for compression and encryption filters.
>
> And of course this was "a straightforward suggestion".. Perhaps
> other people would suggest something more sophisticated.
>
> Vladimir Dergachev
>
>
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/