From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S262202AbUK3S0Z (ORCPT ); Tue, 30 Nov 2004 13:26:25 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S262236AbUK3S0Y (ORCPT ); Tue, 30 Nov 2004 13:26:24 -0500 Received: from rproxy.gmail.com ([64.233.170.199]:36710 "EHLO rproxy.gmail.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S262202AbUK3S0O (ORCPT ); Tue, 30 Nov 2004 13:26:14 -0500 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:reply-to:to:subject:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:references; b=o7jVl4ecXyB7S8HQD65xmblmgCfbq/qI6uUnIkImVjaO2PnKzV6AEu5ZS+cZpbIfGwxo2a/CuXlB6BooHvsV5omce2nvfuApJpUuEiDx0kzc9Mj8hn/64/d3dbtZe+4bnqZouVRtHqL86r5ebEvHmL6mFrte9HHLQIU35249f6w= Message-ID: <2c59f00304113010262063d219@mail.gmail.com> Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 23:56:07 +0530 From: Amit Gud Reply-To: Amit Gud To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: file as a directory In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <200411292120.iATLKZxE004233@laptop11.inf.utfsm.cl> <1101832103.2885.4.camel@zathras.emsl.pnl.gov> <04113011354200.08643@tabby> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org I cannot imagine viewing the entire filesystem as a single huge XML file. My suggestion is to add a framework, an infrastructure, in the VFS wherein a simple plugin can be written to poke into the file as if it were a directory. So with that framework in place, I can write a plugin for archive support (treating the .tar files as directories), Peter could write a plugin for poking into /etc/passwd (treating it as a directory), and Jon Doe could write a plugin for sendmail.cf like: -- struct file_operations ops = { .read = tar_readdir, .readdir = tar_readdir, ...... }; register_file_type("tar", &ops); -- How good would this be? AG -- May the source be with you.