Re: File dialogs: Network access

[Ken Fox <kfox vulpes com>]

Dylan Griffiths wrote:
> This is precisely how userland NFS works. ...

Obviously nobody is going to implement these file systems in the kernel.
The actual implementation would be very different between Linux, Hurd and
Plan-9. From the human-computer interface perspective we shouldn't care
about the implementation, just about the user-visible effects.

> But things like FTP, or other network transports used for file sharing,
> should be done via kernel VFS hooks (IMO) :)

IMHO a file system is a bit more permanent than what I would usually
use a URL-enabled dialog for. Lots of time I just need a one-shot file
copy and I'm done -- no reason to have that VFS mount laying around.

There are also lots of user interface issues with VFS. Where do the
mounts occur? How does the user specify a mount? What is the error
reporting mechanism? What happens when a file system feature (symlink?)
isn't available on a mount? How do the mounts get removed? What happens
when two people request the same target -- do they share the same
mount? What happens if they have different access permissions to the
target?

VFS is extremely useful. I just don't think that implementation decisions
like this should show up in the file dialogs. Allow URLs and translate
to the underlying implementation.

- Ken