Re: Plans for gnome-vfs replacement

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Sat, 2006-09-23 at 21:06 +0200, Reiner Jung wrote:
> 
> As pointed out a high-level vfs must support a more object-oriented
> view to files. I think, we should stop thinking of files in a
> hierarchical file system and start using the term document or
> (information) object ... because classical file systems are going
> south. Things like Beagle, the MacOS search thingy or the database
> based Windows file system (which will be released just after the hurd,
> I am absolutely sure) are pointing in a different way of organizing
> information.

I think that there is interesting research and ideas in the
generalization of filesystems and new abstractions for it. However, this
is not yet a well known area where we can reliably come up with a system
that will work well and be useful to users. Furthermore, I don't see the
current file sharing systems such as SMB, NFS, FTP, DAV, etc go away
anytime soon, and we absolutely need a solid system to handle those,
which is what I'm proposing.

If anyone wants to work on something like what you propose that is
great, and I applaud them. But it doesn't replace the VFS, nor does it
have to be implemented at that level.

I'm personally slightly worried that what you describe is very similar
to the WinFS approach that seems to have failed even with the enourmous
resources thrown at it by Microsoft.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
                   alexl redhat com    alla lysator liu se 
He's an unconventional voodoo paranormal investigator with a robot buddy named 
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