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I know some systems leverage the modern file meta data (extended attributes), but it's clearly not successful enough that folks can use them for an application
by whartung 7mo ago
I know some systems leverage the modern file meta data (extended attributes), but it's clearly not successful enough that folks can use them for an application like this.
Ostensibly, things like MacOS Spotlight can bring real utility and value to the file system, and extended attributes through the sidecar indexing, etc. But Spotlight is infamous for its unreliability.
The other issue with file systems is simply that the user (potentially) has "direct access" to them, in that they can readily move files in and up and around whimsically. The "structure" is laid bare for them to potentially interfere with, or, such as the case with the extended attributes, drag a file to a USB fob, and then copy it back -- inadvertently removing those attributes.
And thats how we end up with everything being stuffed into a SQLite DB.
- packetlost 7mo agoYeah, IMO extended metadata attributes are fine for caching data that can be recovered via other means but generally violate the principal of least surprise. For them to be successful a standardized transparent container format or something would be necessary, but at that point the FS abstraction is leaking.
- prmph 7mo agoWhat about using the file name itself as the metadata storage?
- packetlost 7mo agoThat works but has strict length limits and is visibly ugly. Fine for very limited cases I guess
- jmathai 7mo agoI have used this approach with exiftool to add custom tags for “album”. https://stackoverflow.com/a/68284922 https://stackoverflow.com/a/68284922 Here is my source file for it. It was so long ago I don’t recall all the details but you can retrieve this information using exif commands. https://github.com/jmathai/elodie/blob/master/configs/ExifTool_config https://github.com/jmathai/elodie/blob/master/configs/ExifTo...