Subject: Re: silent semantic changes with reiser4
From: Lee Revell <rlrevell@joe-job.com>
To: Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz>
Cc: Spam <spam@tnonline.net>, Horst von Brand <vonbrand@inf.utfsm.cl>,
       Jamie Lokier <jamie@shareable.org>, David Masover <ninja@slaphack.com>,
       Chris Wedgwood <cw@f00f.org>, viro@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk,
       Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>, Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>,
       Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com>, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org,
       linux-kernel <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
       Alexander Lyamin aka FLX <flx@namesys.com>,
       ReiserFS List <reiserfs-list@namesys.com>
In-Reply-To: <20040902194909.GA8653@atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz>
References: <rlrevell@joe-job.com>
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	 <200409021425.i82EPn9i005192@laptop11.inf.utfsm.cl>
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Date: Thu, 02 Sep 2004 16:01:17 -0400
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On Thu, 2004-09-02 at 15:49, Pavel Machek wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> > >> FWIW, this is how Windows does it now.  As of XP, 'Find files' has an
> > >> option, enabled by default, to look inside archives.  If you tell it to
> > >> look for a driver in a given directory it will also look inside .cab
> > >> and .zip files.  It's extremely useful, I would imagine someone who uses
> > >> XP a lot will come to expect this feature.
> > 
> > > It is trivial to implement this by looking inside the files. I.e., the way
> > > mc has done this for ages.
> > 
> >   Difference is that you can't do "locate" or "find" or "Search".. You
> >   would have to open the files in an archive-supporting application
> >   such as mc.
> 
> You really need archive support in find. At the very least you need
> option "enter archives" vs. "do not enter archives". Entering archives
> automagically is seriously wrong.

But is it efficient to make every application that reads files have to
know how to get inside a tar file, just to read its contents?  That
seems like a massive duplication of effort.  Better to have the contents
accessible via a separate stream, in the same namespace.  Fix it once in
the kernel vs. fix it in umpteen apps.

The key point here is that the expressive power of the system is greatly
reduced by having a fragmented namespace.  Of course there are any
number of ways for an app to find out what is in a tar file, but
exporting all of that information in a unified namespace is nontrivial
and much more interesting.

Lee

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