9fans archive / 2001 / 11 / 754 /    prev next

From: Skip Tavakkolian <skipt@rea...>
Subject: Re: [9fans] Python filesystem
Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2001 12:02:21 -0800

In a thread long ago, Rob mentioned an idea proposed by Doug McIlroy for an
indexed/annotated filesystem that would keep an annotation file for each
regular file. It would seem like the right idea for keeping the mod
documentation, etc.

BTW, I've not been able to find any reference to the annotation/fs idea.
Was anything written up (that could be shared)?

>What do we lack then?  Locking and management of metadata?  There's
>probably a way around those, as well.  The revision control FS isn't
>well formed for saving; maybe a better solution would be to echo a
>revision number into a ctl or new file, and then have that create a new
>delta.  Write the file into it, and let the FS take care of picking out
>the delta and storing it.  Perhaps a metadata file could be associated
>with every file.  eg, foo.c;meta, foo.c;1.0, etc.