Re: The argument for fs assistance in handling archives

[David Masover]

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Paul Jakma wrote:
| On Fri, 3 Sep 2004, Spam wrote:
|
|>  Indeed. I hope I didn't say otherwise :).
|
|
| Sure.
|
|>  Just that I think it  will
|>  be very difficult to have this transparency in all apps. Just
|>  thinking of "nano file.jpg/description.txt" or "ls
|>  file.tar/untar/*.doc". Sure in some environments like Gnome it could
|>  work, but it still doesn't for the rest of the flora of Linux
|>  programs.
|
|
| "will it be transparent for all apps?", whether that's worth doing
| depends on the technical implications. Thankfully we have Al and Linus
| to make the judgement call on that ;)

So far, the technical implications are mainly "does it create a serious
issue in the distant future" or "does some exotic new feature that
doesn't exist yet cause problems" and not "it's currently broken".

Right now, I can edit a file's permissions, transparently, from any app,
and I haven't noticed any stability issues at all.

| Personally, I think that if GNOME can provide transparency for GNOME
| users, I think that's probably enough - unless there are literally no
| issues in adding some kind of VFS support.

Only it can't.  Especially if it's a typical GNOME user, who gets used
to having their files encrypted in foo.tar.pgp, say.  Works in abiword,
works in gedit, breaks in OpenOffice.  Not good.

| The nano / ls /tar user is likely a very different user to the GNOME
| user. That user is also likely to appreciate the problems with backups
| and such more.

I'm a vim/ls/tar user.  And I believe the problems with backups to be
very minor.  There are other issues that I don't understand as
thoroughly, so I'll leave them to Al and Linus.

| Anyway, userspace transparency is sufficient for most classes of users.
| Only reason to provide some kernel support is if it makes sense ("but
| not all apps can use GNOME transparency" not being one of those reasons).

Can you justify why "not all apps can use GNOME transparency" is not a
valid reason?  Would you still think so if GNOME transparency was the
only way to read isofs?
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