Re: Proposal for Remote Execution

[Jürg Billeter <j bitron ch>]

On Thu, 2018-04-19 at 11:34 +0100, Jim MacArthur wrote:
> On 11/04/18 21:37, Jürg Billeter wrote:
> > Virtual File System API
> > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> > As a second phase I'm proposing to introduce a virtual file system API that
> > both BuildStream core and element plugins can use in place of path-based
> > file system operations provided by the OS. The goal is to allow transparent
> > and efficient manipulation of Merkle trees.
> >
> > The API consists of an abstract Directory class that supports creating
> > directories, copying/renaming/moving files and whole directory trees, and
> > importing files from a local path. See also the existing `utils` functions
> > `link_files` and `copy_files`, equivalent operations need to be supported.
>
> You explicitly say importing files but not exporting - do you intend 
> there to be any means to copy files or directories out of a virtual 
> directory to a local path, as we currently do when running `bst checkout`?

It might not strictly be necessary for the plugin API but we could
implement it anyway for completeness. `bst checkout` wouldn't be
required to be ported to the new API, however, it may make the code
more consistent, so maybe we should do it.

Jürg