El mié, 17-12-2003 a las 15:38, Alexander Larsson escribió: > On Wed, 2003-12-17 at 19:02, Manuel Amador (Rudd-O) wrote: > > > I can't help to wonder what were they thinking? If EAs aren't for this, > > what the hell are they for? The file system has been claiming our > > metadata need for AGES, and the kernel people still don't do anything > > for that. Evidently, a user-space solution would be easier to code, > > perhaps, but a kernel-level solution has the guarantee to be more > > pervasive and easy to use for developers. > > They are designed mainly for ACLs. And due to NFS and other network > filesystem in common use there needs to be a userspace solution too, so > duplicating support for EAs might be a waste of work. If ACLs can be saved, I don't see a reason why small tuples of data cannot (at least the MIME type, perhaps a comment, anything that can be regularized and standardized in format and procedure). NFS already supports ACLs, and may support EAs in the future. What the GNOME project needs to do in regard to metadata is to define a metadata API, call it a lib, and provide at least an EA and a dotfile implementation. This would allow for uniform user-level development, and cover the case for NFS. Lets put things in perspective: The fact that NFS doesn't let you share EAs nowadays is just that. NFS is a minor case, one that will touch less than 10% of all GNOME-running computers with EA support. For that ten percent, a dotfile implementation of a metadata API, together with its specification and all related standards, would provide a (perhaps with lesser functionality) workable alternative, one that would guarantee metadata existence. I predict that, in one to two years, 40% to 50% of all the GNOME-running UNIX and UNIX-like variants such as Linux will have support for EAs, both at the kernel level and at the user space level (at least the GNU fileutils, and pax, and tar). Of those, maybe 10% would use NFS (for which there would be a dotfile implementation of metadata, just like the Mac saves its resource forks on a hidden folder in FAT volumes). This leaves at LEAST 30% of GNOME desktops with EA capability, and no problem whatsoever falling back to alternate metadata implementations. Counting the fact that most Linux distributions currently support EAs out of the box on several filesystem configurations (ext2, ext3, reiserfs), you can count on EAs being widely in use in 5 years. Both of these observations contradict the proposition that an EA implementation would be useless. In fact, these observations strongly support the notion that the EA mechanism/implementation of metadata should be the default, and the dotfile implementation should be used as a fallback on volumes where GNOME/Nautilus has detected no EA support. If there has been a time to standardize and (god forbid this idea) hijack the EA namespace, it's now, and it should be us. A FreeDesktop.org standard or proposal should be written around it, and perhaps a companion proposal should be written for dotfile implementations of metadata libraries, so both the GNOME and KDE camps can have their implementation in their chosen languages. > > =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= > Alexander Larsson Red Hat, Inc > alexl redhat com alla lysator liu se > He's an old-fashioned moralistic grifter for the 21st century. She's a > provocative punk cab driver with an incredible destiny. They fight crime! -- Manuel Amador (Rudd-O) GPG key ID: keyserver.net C1033CAD
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