From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: <5d375e920708161739n3341b5efuacd3b3bc829afe43@mail.gmail.com> Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2007 02:39:40 +0200 From: Uriel To: "Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs" <9fans@cse.psu.edu> Subject: Re: [9fans] everything is a directory In-Reply-To: <3e1162e60708160701u66b064e3g5a611023a95137f9@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline References: <1187223167.452937.319060@l22g2000prc.googlegroups.com> <3e1162e60708160701u66b064e3g5a611023a95137f9@mail.gmail.com> Topicbox-Message-UUID: aa964314-ead2-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 On 8/16/07, David Leimbach wrote: > Unix already has this, and their called extended attributes, and I hate them > with a burning passion. Rsync, cp, any tool that manipulates files (tar for > example) has to be able to capture this data, and just reading the file > won't do it anymore. > > Oh and to make things more "fun" FreeBSD, Linux and Mac OS X at least have > different ways of dealing with them, and max size limits etc. > > Where are people picturing the great utility of them? I've found it to be > the worst thing invented since symlinks (except maybe relative symlinks that > use environment variables to complete part of the path... Makes everything > way more complex than it needs to be) Amen to all this, for once we agree completely. The sad thing is that while they added all this wonderful 'features', they could not be bothered to implement things as basic as proper union mounts and bind operations, which Plan 9 has had for eons. I'm waiting for some genius to come up with the idea of extended attributes for extended attributes... The 'files as directories' paradigm (which seems like the linux guys are moving towards) is a really scary semantic minefield which makes symlink-induced nightmares look like a walk around Disneyworld. 'Magic symlinks' are, as you point out, even worse. But lets not complain, think of how many jobs all this extra complexity is helping create, I'm sure the good shape of the world economy is in good part thanks to the great progress in our wonderful software industry. Best wishes uriel