Re: Configuration (File) System
On Thu, 2004-03-18 at 13:05, Martin Waitz wrote:
> hi :)
>
> On Thu, Mar 18, 2004 at 10:48:14AM +0100, Jens Hermans wrote:
> > Currently I'm working on a technology to be able to represent
> > configuration files as filesystems. The whole thing is outlined at
> > http://users.pandora.be/paranet/CFS.htm , but I'll try to sumarize it
> > shortly in here.
>
> you should have a look at the work hans reiser envisions with future
> versions of his reiserfs file system: http://www.namesys.com
>
> --
> CU, / Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen, Germany
> Martin Waitz // Department of Computer Science 12 _________
> ______________/// - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ///
> dies ist eine manuell generierte mail, sie beinhaltet //
> tippfehler und ist auch ohne grossbuchstaben gueltig. /
Very interesting stuff, if I may quote:
"Ordering and grouping are not just better; file system upward
compatibility makes them cheaper for unifying naming in OSes based on
hierarchical file systems than a relational naming system would be. This
approach is fully upwardly compatible with the old file system. Users
should be able to retain their old habits for as long as they wish,
engage in a slow comfortable migration, and incorporate the new features
into their habits as they feel the desire. Elderly programs should be
untroubled in their operation. Many worthwhile projects fail because
they emphasize how much they wish to change rather than asking of the
user the minimal collection of changes necessary to achieve the added
functionality."
This is exactly the reason why I don't like the XML approach to
configuration, cause if you want to configure something, you'd have to
learn new functions and APIs.
The rest of the article is basicly about a new approach to filesystems,
extending the existing "paths" with search-like capabilities instead of
providing libs that a developer might include into his program for these
functions.
These last things are a bit outside of scope, since i'm only trying to
fit a configuration file into the existing filesystem (which will be
probably be completely different in 10 years) and i'm not about to
reimplement the linux vfs, with those query'ing capabilites. But still,
very interesting.
Reply to: