[fuse-devel] Re: yet again files-as-dirs, or vice versa...

[Csaba H. <csa...@cr...>]

On Mon, Dec 12, 2005 at 10:40:27AM +0100, Miklos Szeredi wrote:
> > And then you get the desired effect with dir-as-file, too. I admit that
> > your mp3's would look a bit sick in blue when you bash them with 
> > "ls --co", but enhanced semantics has a price :)
> 
> It's not just "ls" looking slightly wrong.  It's basically _all_ apps
> breaking.

You made me curious. I modified fusexmp so that regular files of the
original fs are shown by it as directories, and try to play mp3s, view
images under it (the FreeBSD module supports reading dirs [but that's
another trick, not related to my proposal])... Programs with a
comprehensive interface -- gmplayer, vlc, gqview -- couldn't grok the
dual nature of the objects but simple ones -- mplayer, mpg123, display
-- worked fine with them. So "basically _all_ apps breaking" is not true
in this form :)

Anyway... the point is that people who would try to experiment with
non-standard semantics probably don't care about breaking apps -- cf.

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.file-systems.fuse.devel/1051

> The type of a file is a very important thing, and you cannot change it
> without serious consequences.

Fs authors don't change file types, they define them :)

----------------

Back to the origins: well, if this is not how people would like to get
hybrids entities, then of course, I won't push it on... until I cook up
an fs idea which would really need this ;)

Csaba