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Where else would it be appropriate? Either you give every application special knowledge of both dotfiles and NTFS, or you give the filesystem special knowledge
by mmastrac 4y ago
Where else would it be appropriate?
Either you give every application special knowledge of both dotfiles and NTFS, or you give the filesystem special knowledge of dotfiles.
Hypothetically you could write a special daemon that listened for all filesystem events on NTFS filesystems and set this attribute for any created dotfile, but that's incredibly roundabout for one feature.
- Animats 4y ago> Where else would it be appropriate? In the file picker and "Files" utility. "Files" already has a "Show hidden files" setting. Most applications now use a common file picker, because the file picker now has some security privileges - it can give the application the privilege to access a file otherwise not allowed.
- mmastrac 4y agoUnfortunately, the file picker doesn't create most dotfiles, and the point of the "hidden" attribute is to make them invisible on Windows which doesn't have this logic baked in. I understand the logic of having display functionality in the file picker, but what are the chances that we can collectively convince Windows Shell32 developers that explorer.exe needs to display files prefixed with dots as hidden? I think we're both on the same page that it's a hack, but it's a practical hack in that it avoids the need to involve unrelated third parties.
- selfhoster11 4y agoI think the former is a reasonable solution. For example, Nautilus will honour both filenames starting with a ., and all files listed inside a file named `.hidden` in a directory. Adding a third mechanism to hide files is not a big stretch.
- phendrenad2 4y agoIt's not a reasonable solution because you, nor I, nor the collected users of Linux, have access to or authority to change every Windows program.