Re: VFS integration with kernel mounts "gtk-devel-list gnome org" <gtk-devel-list gnome org>

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Fri, 2007-05-04 at 10:02 +0200, Petr Tomasek wrote:
> > 
> > One of the big advantages with the mount model in gvfs (as opposed to
> > gnome-vfs) is that we know when authentication will happed (at
> > mounttime) and can handle it in a sane way in the app. In gnome-vfs
> > authentication (including infinite blocking if the dialog appeared under
> > your window, or lots of dialogs if e.g. listing various mountpoints) can
> > happen at *any* i/o operation, which is not sanely handleable by the
> > app.
> > 
> 
> How would you handle then cases, where e.g. a part of WebDAV share
> is accessible without any authentication, while it's subdirectories
> are protected?

Yes, that is a problem. Http is a stateless protocol and doesn't match
what most other filesystems do. We'd have to do some "magic" to make it
work in a stateful way. In this case we'd probably make that
subdirectory be a separate mount. 

At least we only need to do weird stuff to turn http into a stateful
model, as opposed to turning everything else into a stateless model as
in gnome-vfs. Of course, none are ideal, and I don't think the gvfs API
is anywhere near an ideal http access library.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
                   alexl redhat com    alla lysator liu se 
He's a time-tossed Jewish filmmaker gone bad. She's a bloodthirsty blonde 
former first lady from Mars. They fight crime!