Re: Request: Test suite for EFS.

[Kent Schumacher <kent structural-wood com>]

bob@thestuff.net wrote:

> First, a few questions. What file system does EFS use? Is it something
>that any unix that supports mounting a file vea loop back can mount? Is it
> a standard file system? If not, being able to read the file by any non
> gnome app would be difficult to implement. Also, why EFS? Can gnome-vfs
> not do what you want? No one commented on the use of tar as the file
> system to maintain portability. What do you guys think of it?
>

Regarding tar files.

Tar has at least 3 shortcomings.

1) There isn't an index to allow quickly moving to a given data item.
2) There isn't any way to insert a data-element that has grown without
    re-writing the whole file
3) There isn't any way to remove or shrink a data-element without rewriting
    the whole file.

It's interesting to note that points 2 and 3 are problems that are common to any sort of
storage management system, be it malloc, a filesystem, or a data-base.