> Anyway, linux also does not have unionFS. If it was that big of a deal,
> someone would write it. As it is, it's a whizbang no one cares about enough.
BSD has had a UnionFS for a while now, by the way.
There are a lot of things we _could_ add to filesystems, E.G.:
* Appending to a read-only filesystem on a separate volume
* File versioning
* Transparent, variable compression
* Format conversion, (I.E. write a png file to a filesystem, and it is
automatically visible as half a dozen other
formats, without them actually existing on
the disk)
* Priorities, (E.G. temp files could have a bit to indicate that we
don't really care how long they remain in
write-cache, instead of flushing them along with
other more-important-to-get-to-the-oxide data)
* WORM mode, (I.E. start at block 1 and use blocks sequentially, never
re-using blocks - makes a tape somewhat usable as a
block device)
Some of these are available in some form or another already. There is
plenty we can do, given enough time :-).
John.