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Am I the only one who always feels uneasy when using NFS-like filesystems? In my experience way too much software has been built without any kind of fault toler

Am I the only one who always feels uneasy when using NFS-like filesystems? In my experience way too much software has been built without any kind of fault tolerance regarding file system access, and no matter how good your network filesystem is, it still can cause havoc and every sort of data loss. I've seen so many disasters related to software basically assuming a file can't just vanish into thin air, something that can very much happen when your FS is running on top of an arbitrary network connection. Hiding away such a fundamental detail in order to provide a file-like API tends to instill every sort of bad ideas into people (NFS via Wi-Fi? Why not!).

PopeDotNinja 6y ago
I learned not to use Dropbox for things like Git repos. I'd have a fresh copy on one computer, and then have an older copy on a different computer. Sometimes I'd accidentally overwrite the newer code w/ autosaving on the older code. Now I'm skeptical that I'll be able to keep everything properly in sync on any sort of network-ish file system that is wrestling for control with my local file system.
- Asooka 6y ago
  Oh, I ran into the same problems, so in the end I decided to treat the Dropbox repo as a remote - create a bare repository in your Dropbox, clone it to a local folder, push/pull as you would any other repo. It's not optimal, but it's an easy way to get a private hosted repo.
- hnlmorg 6y ago
  I'd have thought the very point of git would have negated the need for Dropbox or network file systems.
moduspol 6y ago
My instinct is with yours, but in some very simple use cases, it can make sense. For example, you've got a legacy PHP web application you have to maintain, and it's got spaghetti code all over the place, but all uploaded user content is stored / served from a single directory. You can probably use an S3-backed file system to replace that directory. Obviously if you try to do, say, an "ls -la" on that directory and there are a lot of files in there, you may be waiting a while, since that translates to a lot of API calls. Similarly if you have something like a virus scan running on the box, it's likely to be tripped up. But if you know the only thing using that directory is doing simple CRUD operations, it might be easier than trying to retrofit the application itself to talk to S3. Especially now that S3 has strong consistency.

PopeDotNinja 6y ago

I learned not to use Dropbox for things like Git repos. I'd have a fresh copy on one computer, and then have an older copy on a different computer. Sometimes I'd accidentally overwrite the newer code w/ autosaving on the older code. Now I'm skeptical that I'll be able to keep everything properly in sync on any sort of network-ish file system that is wrestling for control with my local file system.

Asooka 6y ago
Oh, I ran into the same problems, so in the end I decided to treat the Dropbox repo as a remote - create a bare repository in your Dropbox, clone it to a local folder, push/pull as you would any other repo. It's not optimal, but it's an easy way to get a private hosted repo.
hnlmorg 6y ago
I'd have thought the very point of git would have negated the need for Dropbox or network file systems.

moduspol 6y ago

My instinct is with yours, but in some very simple use cases, it can make sense. For example, you've got a legacy PHP web application you have to maintain, and it's got spaghetti code all over the place, but all uploaded user content is stored / served from a single directory. You can probably use an S3-backed file system to replace that directory. Obviously if you try to do, say, an "ls -la" on that directory and there are a lot of files in there, you may be waiting a while, since that translates to a lot of API calls. Similarly if you have something like a virus scan running on the box, it's likely to be tripped up. But if you know the only thing using that directory is doing simple CRUD operations, it might be easier than trying to retrofit the application itself to talk to S3. Especially now that S3 has strong consistency.