Re: shadowfs

[Kalle Olavi Niemitalo <tosi@stekt.oulu.fi>]

I'd prefer a tree-capable shadowfs to a bunch of pseudo-symlinks,
but there's no reason we can't have both.

Adam Olsen <rhamphoryncus@rpex.net> writes:

> The other problem is the configuration: where do you put the
> config files

The /dirOne/*, /dirTwo/*.html, etc. patterns could be stored as
arguments of the translator,

# settrans /bin /hurd/symlinkdir "-" "/usr/bin/*" "/X11R6/bin/*"

or there could be an option to read them from a file:

# echo '- /usr/bin/* /X11R6/bin/*' > /etc/symlinkdir.bin
# settrans /bin /hurd/symlinkdir --patterns-from=/etc/symlinkdir.bin

A pattern containing spaces or other funny characters would have
to be quoted for the translator:
   "/spaces in name/"*
and also for the shell parsing the echo command line:
   '"/spaces in name/"*'

It would be simpler to require the patterns in
/etc/symlinkdir.bin to be delimited with \0 (as in some GNU
utilities), but that's no good because there must also be a way
to quote the asterisk.

The lone dash would mean to use the untranslated contents of the
node (generating no symlinks for them).  If the dash argument
were not used, the node wouldn't have to be a directory.  (Does
any of the Hurd's current translators do anything with the node
it sits on?)