Re: Metadata support
Re: Metadata support
- Subject: Re: Metadata support
- From: Boyd Waters <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 21:33:39 -0600
On Jun 25, 2006, at 7:02 PM, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote:
What are you folks actually trying to do? Have you considered that
it might be the wrong thing? :)
Oh, I consider that I'm doing the wrong thing about six times before
breakfast... :)
I'm trying to back up my files from Mac OSX to Linux or FreeBSD, and
I want the extended attributes to be mapped to the foreign file
system so that a file's attributes may travel reliably from copy to
copy on the Linux side (e.g., across server backups) and still make
sense when the file is examined by a Mac.
If I understand correctly, then Spotlight simply derives search
features from the underlying data: re-generating these features is
the way to go. (I'm not asking for Spotlight to shove all of an MP3
song file's information attributes into the file's POSIX xattrs.)
But Finder attributes, to name another application, are _not_ derived
from the underlying data: where it a file's Finder label stored? In
some other file. Surprise, surprise...
I am anticipating an "extended Finder" that will expose extended
attributes to the GUI, allowing users to tag files and create more
effective smart folders. The fact that the system may cache these
attributes in a SQLite store or some hash is immaterial, an
implementation choice. What I _don't_ want is for there to be some
orthogonal store for these per-file attributes.
I want per-file attributes to be maintained with the file -
semantically "in" the file.
- so that cp, tar and friends properly maintains these attributes.
I think that mapping these attributes to POSIX xattrs is a no-
brainer, particularly if the attribute names follow the reverse-DNS
attribute namespace that Spotlight made us think about.
It may be that Apple's prior implementation of resource forks has
soured OSX filesystem people on this notion. But there seems to be a
standard for (at least) simple name-value pairs now. Why not use it?
(Thanks for the comments!)
- boyd
Boyd Waters
National Radio Astronomy Observatory
Socorro, New Mexico
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