Re: Integrating support for GNOME VFS into glibc

[Nielsen <nielsen memberwebs com>]

Nicholas Allen wrote:
> Do you know of any specific problems that couldn't be addressed?

Well here's one for starters...

Network operations and local file system operations generally require a 
 different programming paradigm. Look at Windows File Sharing on 
windows for instance. It's plugged into the basic syscalls. When things 
are going well, everything's works nicely, but the moment you have 
network trouble your system hangs up and turns into a brick.

The file system is appropriate for synchronous calls, whereas network 
operations should be done asynchronously (or on a different thread etc...).

Sure, this is less of a problem for command line apps, but it's 
relevancy for GUI stuff shouldn't be ignored. It seems that approaches 
which tie in network file systems at a low level like this will always 
be a hack (although useable in certain circumstances), rather than a 
sound implemantation (and useable everywhere).

Cheers,
Nate