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Re: Packaging system improvements



Brian White writes:
 > >  > > As to 1 (Keywords), they will be better addressed by a better
 > >  > > sectionning scheme (see <[🔎] 199707011849.UAA00558@bylbo.nowhere.earth> in
 > >  > > the "Sub-categorizing /usr/doc" thread)
 > >  >
 > >  > You cannot sub-categorize something efficiently in a single directory tree
 > >  > where there are multiple hierachies of categories.
 > > 
 > > Agreed. That's why the refered mail suggested an extension to the e2fs
 > > driver to handle this very problem. Did you read it ? If you can't
 > > find it anymore, I can bounce it to the list.
 > 
 > I didn't see it.  My friends and I here have talked about what would be
 > a neat extension to a filesystem.  What you're talking about might be
 > something similar.

OK. I don't really find the explanation I thought was in the refered
mail, but here's the idea:

* using pseudo-directories for each partitionning-scheme
(eg. 'interface', 'section',etc.). Let's call such pseudo-dirs
"categ-partitions".

* such a categ-partition would contain a list of "categories"
(eg. 'X11', 'tty', etc. for 'interface', 'games', 'text', etc. for
'section'). These categories would not be regular dirs either (see
below), but would be able to contain anything a regular dir can.

* another type of pseudo-dir would contain only
categ-partitions. Let's call it 'top', for I lack ideas :)

* all categories would act as if they had sub-dirs for each category
that is not in the same categ-partition or in the partition of any
categ in the path from 'top' to themselves. eg, top/X11 will appear to
have 'games' and 'text' as sub-dirs, but top/games/X11 would have none.

* additionnaly, all categs would appear to have as subdirs the
partitions of the categs defined in the previous point.

* all partition will have all its categs as subdirs, and only those.

Then the hierarchy would look like:

top/[interface/]{X11,tty}/[[section/]{games,text}/]
top/[section/]{games,text}/[[interface/]{X11,tty}/]

(with [] meaning optional, and {a,b} meaning a or b)

Each of those pseudo-dirs (which are many) would have been
automagically created, while the user just created top, interface,
X11, tty, section, games, end text.

Then the file/dir 'xgalaga' would be found in the following
pseudo-dirs:

top/[[interface/]X11/][[section/]games/]
top/[[section/]games/][[interface/]X11/]


As already said, we could use soft-links for that, but it would be an
awful mess.
Furthermore, with such pseudo-dirs (dirs with special attributes ?),
we could even add some options to 'ls' to show/hide specific parts.

I hope I didn't forget something critical for understanding.

Brian: is it near to what you discussed with your friends ?
Everyone: any suggestions/comments/concept-bug-reports ?

-- 
Yann Dirson <dirson@univ-mlv.fr>
http://monge.univ-mlv.fr/~dirson


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