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List:       gentoo-dev
Subject:    Re: [gentoo-dev] (FS) Attributes for Ebuilds?
From:       Marko Mikulicic <marko () seul ! org>
Date:       2003-06-05 9:50:21
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On Giovedì, giugno 5, 2003, at 10:00 AM, Daniel Armyr wrote:

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>> b. you wouldn't have to build a new tool, filesystems
>> capable of handling these kind of attributes have them already
>
> Do Reiser/ext2/ext3 etc support this? If not, I assume this would mean 
> one needs a separade partition for /usr/portage, no? Althought using 
> allready available tools is a good thing, I feel needing yet another 
> partition complicates things, as well allowing less HD space to be 
> used.
>
1) there is support for ext2/ext3 extended attributes, but is currently 
available only as kernel patches.
2) you don't need to have another partition with (say) XFS, you could 
create a loopback filesystem
for /usr/portage (xfs_growfs can grow filesystem online).
3) it's complicated. that's guaranteed.

 From a theorical point of view I welcome any innovation in the 
filesystem.
Extended attributes and posix ACLs are just a little step, if you 
compare it with the features
which the OpenVMS filesystem has, but however we live in a UNIX world 
and
that means tar, ftp, nfs, scp .... all these tools would simply drop 
the extended attributes.
  (star can save ACLs but not generic extended attributes)
  The Apple approach to UNIX has made me think about it; they came from 
an attributed
filesystem which also allowed multiple data streams (forks) and 
switched back to a standard UNIX flat fs.
  The structured files the once had are now built with directories and 
the highest level of UI hides this
trick and treats those "special" directories as files. This approach is 
not very elegant, expecially when
you use command-line tools that does not obey to this abstraction, but 
is compatible with all file transfer
and publishing methods.
  I don't know what is best. Today you have to cope with a long history
and inertia has it's own inertia.

Marko



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