Re: GNOME VFS and FUSE.

[Jamie McCracken <jamiemcc blueyonder co uk>]

Darren Kenny wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I would like to get some discussion going on this topic as it really is a
> point of concern for non-Linux users of GNOME...
>
> According to Robert Love[1] the prospect of FUSE replacing GNOME VFS was well
> received at GUADEC. I was present, and took part from a Solaris standpoint, in
> the discussion about this at Alex's talk about the future of GNOME VFS.
>
> I certainly didn't think that it was well received - more a controversial
> change I would think. It seemed to me that there was a split in the room.
>
> OK, some people accepted that it is a possible solution to "legacy"
> applications that are not opensource, but also unlikely to ever even consider
> the possibility of using GNOME VFS - and I do tend to agree, from this
> perspective but not in the way that is being suggested, i.e. to replace GNOME
> VFS with FUSE.

Im a FUSE fanboy but I dont think you will see FUSE completely replace a 
VFS. For async operation you are going to need some kind of wrapper API 
which could provide suitable fallback to a legacy Gnome-VFS or other VFS 
systems.

Ideally FUSE would be the main way with apps not requiring an async API 
(or unwilling to depened on a VFS ) being able to use it directly with 
POSIX calls if they so choose.

It would be great if this wrapper API (and possibly a document centric 
API too) was in Glib.

> I don't see why we should push out a perfectly good GNOME VFS implementation,
> with a rich API, to be replaced with a POSIX based file API that would result
> in some weird uses of ioctl()s and the like to access meta-information. Not to
> mention the kernel context switching that would result from such calls.
>
> I makes more sense to me to fix/address the "concerns" that people have with
> the GNOME VFS API - and these mainly seem to be down to complexity - or a
> thinking that it's too difficult to use - where does this come from? If it's
> really like this, then it seems we need to provide a simple version of the
> API for people that need it.

The problems of ABI stability would limits the ability to correct 
current flaws. It also seems you cant even fully remove Bonobo 
dependency as a result of this so its going to make life difficult to 
maintain Gnome-vfs in the long run.

Anyways, thats just my thoughts on the matter...


--
Mr Jamie McCracken
http://jamiemcc.livejournal.com/