Re: Extended attributes, Linux and GNOME

["Manuel Amador (Rudd-O)" <amadorm usm edu ec>]

> *if* they have a kernel that supports them.  RH8 doesn't  RH9 doesn't. 
> Not distro I know of does.  No -STABLE release of FreeBSD does.  I doubt
> any of the other BSD's do.  Just the people riding the bleeding edge of
> Free OS's get these features.
They will do =)

> And even if we supported them, relying on them is still bad.  You can't
> back ACL's up with most tools available (Acl/ea support is just barely
> starting to get into GNU userspace).
Yes.  I agree with you that relying on them would be bad.  But using 
them when they are available is a good idea, because it elegantly solves 
the problem of how to make attributes on files available to several 
users simultaneously, and assuming backup tools support EAs, they are 
also backed up along.

> It wouldn't at all be bad to see *support* for these in GNOME, just not
> *reliance* on them.  
Exactly.

> Even when free OS's do support these fully, you
> still have tons of file-systems that can't handle them at all that GNOME
> should be capable of working with.
yep.

> In other words, GNOME becomes some driving force that screws over its
> users who suddenly find they lose metadata across backups or whatnot,
> all for the goal of furthering a technology that's coming along just
> fine as is... ?
No.  Sean, *read* what I wrote.  I say GNOME *should support EAs now*.  
I do NOT say GNOME *must rely on EAs now*.

> > Trust me.  We can use EAs now.  There's nothing with the current 
> > metafile method that couldn't be done with an EAs ipmlementation.
> >    
>
> Except be reliable.  ;-)
This is the behavior I'd like:

Say you got your /var mounted without EA support, but your /home mounted 
with EA support.

Nautilus should use .nautilus-metafiles in /var.  Nautilus should use 
EAs in /home.  Perhaps Nautilus may keep a copy of the metadata as 
.nautilus-metafiles in /home, but use EAs as the primary source.  So if 
you decide to downgrade to Red Hat 5.2 tomorrow (exaggeration), 
everything would still work and your data would be safe.

As you can see, EAs and most other things are per-volume options, not 
per-computer.

>  
>
> > luck,
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > gnome-devel-list mailing list
> > gnome-devel-list gnome org
> > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-devel-list
> >