From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from mail-oi0-f50.google.com ([209.85.218.50]:46056 "EHLO mail-oi0-f50.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1726000AbeITHrF (ORCPT ); Thu, 20 Sep 2018 03:47:05 -0400 Received: by mail-oi0-f50.google.com with SMTP id t68-v6so6904814oie.12 for ; Wed, 19 Sep 2018 19:06:18 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 From: Shahbaz Youssefi Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2018 22:06:06 -0400 Message-ID: Subject: Re: Streams support in Linux To: willy@infradead.org Cc: linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, ebiggers@kernel.org, viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Sender: linux-fsdevel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: > Let's go over the properties of a file stream: > > - It has no life independent of the file it's attached to; you can't move > it from one file to another > - If the file is deleted, it is also deleted > - If the file is renamed, it travels with the file > - If the file is copied, the copying program decides whether any named > streams are copied along with it. > - Can be created, deleted. Can be renamed? > - Openable, seekable, cachable > - Does not have sub-streams of its own > - Directories may also have streams which are distinct from the files > in the directory > - Can pipes / sockets / device nodes / symlinks / ... have streams? Unclear. > Probably not useful. This certainly sounds useful! And it's called tar. With fs-verity as well, I don't see why they have to put the tree and the data in the same file, when they can just bundle them in a tarball.