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I might grant that NTFS is conceptually similar to BFS (though its alternate data streams lack types, IIRC; been awhile since I dove into that). I am optimisti

by gecko 12y ago

I might grant that NTFS is conceptually similar to BFS (though its alternate data streams lack types, IIRC; been awhile since I dove into that). I am optimistic that the new commandlets introduced in PowerShell 3, along with better tooling, might mean that Windows 9 starts using them more heavily, much like OS X ~10.7 started to. But I don't agree ReFS is in the same boat. ReFS, at least as it exists today, has more in common with Plan 9's Fossil/Venti than anything else. Most notably, it explicitly doesn't support alternate streams, which is the exact piece of NTFS that is most like BFS, nor does it support extended attributes (the vestigial HPFS-era predecessor to alternate data streams). Given that it also lacks things like hard links, file system transactions (N.B., this is database-like transactions for a collection of file system operations, not traditional file system journaling), and a bunch of other things that I associate with BFS-like everything-is-a-database file systems, I don't think that comparison is apt.

frik 12y ago
Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1 add additional features when using ReFS, including alternate data streams [...] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReFS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReFS (bottom) and http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831724.aspx http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831724.aspx ReFS features are still evolving and like NTFS is designed to be extendable (as has happened with NTFS). It is of course NTFS that was involved in all the history of WinNT, Cairo and WinFS and still is the major FS. (I just mentioned ReFS for completeness) Neither NTFS ADS nor Apple'S Resource fork and HFS+ ADS are something new: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS#Alternate_data_streams_.28ADS.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS#Alternate_data_streams_.28..., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_(file_system)#Apple http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_(file_system)#Apple and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_fork http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_fork And neither the Explorer shell nor OSX Finder expose it as GUI - what a shame. dotNet API's lags behind WinAPI, so dotNet/PowerShell just catches up a bit - nothing special. Windows 9 will be interesting indeed. But I have my doubts... given that Win Vista had the advanced search dialog in Explorer shell. The newer Win 7 had no such dialog and generally the whole metadata idea was buried away in the slightly changed UI (removed list-group bar, changed metadata bar, folder doesn't remember state, custom added columns not saved, etc.) Even the great "Photo gallery" application has a optional download as part of their LIVE apps and Media player hides the playlist with its star-rating by default, etc. I don't comment Win 8.x.
- gecko 12y ago
  I didn't realize that ReFS in Win 8.1 had had a meaningful revision, but that's great to hear. And I wasn't saying that ADS or HFS+ ADS were new, but rather that they're barely used, and that the relative increase in usage in recent editions of OS X indicates a comparative uptick. I don't honestly know any common use of ADS on NTFS, although I think that the AppleShare implementation on WinNT 4 used them to preserve Mac OS resource forks, but I haven't looked too hard, either. I disagree with you blowing off the significance of ADS support showing up in PowerShell. You could already access ADS in .NET, but PowerShell it's interesting to see native cmdlets in PowerShell for working with ADS because it's the shell. To me, this indicates that Microsoft is anticipating developers will want to directly work with ADS from PowerShell, and that is interesting to me.
  - frik 12y ago
    Can you give me a link related to the OSX "relative increase in usage in recent editions"? Has Finder gained some new features or are there new applications that take advantage of ADS/resource fork? I like to read up more and learn more about this. OSX Finder "information window" with its metadata feature stayed almost the same since OSX 10.4 Tiger which also marked the introduction of Spotlight desktop search. The command line shell of WinNT, the Win32 console implementation is a bit complex (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Win32_console http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Win32_console ). Win 7+ ships with at least 3 shells: cmd.exe and PowerShell as well as the GUI shell explorer.exe (+ shell32.dll). ADS (called Zone.Identifier) are added by Internet Explorer and recently by other browsers to mark files downloaded from external sites as possibly unsafe to run.
    - gecko 12y ago
      OS X uses HFS+ resource forks for a variety of things, beginning around 10.4. Prior to Mavericks, they were used to handle ACLs, to track Time Machine metadata, to track whether a file was downloaded or native to the file system (which in turn shows up as a Finder warning when launching applications you downloaded from the Internet) and where it was downloaded from, and some other minor things. Beginning with Mavericks, they were also used to support giving files arbitrary tags, which is what I had in mind. You can read more about the implementation at http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/10/os-x-10-9/9/ http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/10/os-x-10-9/9/ . Notably, while all of the above use resource forks, they're not exposed to the user directly as resource forks, but rather as additional Finder widgets and behaviors.

by gecko 12y ago

frik 12y ago

Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1 add additional features when using ReFS, including alternate data streams [...] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReFS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReFS (bottom) and http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831724.aspx http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831724.aspx ReFS features are still evolving and like NTFS is designed to be extendable (as has happened with NTFS). It is of course NTFS that was involved in all the history of WinNT, Cairo and WinFS and still is the major FS. (I just mentioned ReFS for completeness) Neither NTFS ADS nor Apple'S Resource fork and HFS+ ADS are something new: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS#Alternate_data_streams_.28ADS.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS#Alternate_data_streams_.28..., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_(file_system)#Apple http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_(file_system)#Apple and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_fork http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_fork And neither the Explorer shell nor OSX Finder expose it as GUI - what a shame. dotNet API's lags behind WinAPI, so dotNet/PowerShell just catches up a bit - nothing special. Windows 9 will be interesting indeed. But I have my doubts... given that Win Vista had the advanced search dialog in Explorer shell. The newer Win 7 had no such dialog and generally the whole metadata idea was buried away in the slightly changed UI (removed list-group bar, changed metadata bar, folder doesn't remember state, custom added columns not saved, etc.) Even the great "Photo gallery" application has a optional download as part of their LIVE apps and Media player hides the playlist with its star-rating by default, etc. I don't comment Win 8.x.

gecko 12y ago
I didn't realize that ReFS in Win 8.1 had had a meaningful revision, but that's great to hear. And I wasn't saying that ADS or HFS+ ADS were new, but rather that they're barely used, and that the relative increase in usage in recent editions of OS X indicates a comparative uptick. I don't honestly know any common use of ADS on NTFS, although I think that the AppleShare implementation on WinNT 4 used them to preserve Mac OS resource forks, but I haven't looked too hard, either. I disagree with you blowing off the significance of ADS support showing up in PowerShell. You could already access ADS in .NET, but PowerShell it's interesting to see native cmdlets in PowerShell for working with ADS because it's the shell. To me, this indicates that Microsoft is anticipating developers will want to directly work with ADS from PowerShell, and that is interesting to me.
- frik 12y ago
  Can you give me a link related to the OSX "relative increase in usage in recent editions"? Has Finder gained some new features or are there new applications that take advantage of ADS/resource fork? I like to read up more and learn more about this. OSX Finder "information window" with its metadata feature stayed almost the same since OSX 10.4 Tiger which also marked the introduction of Spotlight desktop search. The command line shell of WinNT, the Win32 console implementation is a bit complex (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Win32_console http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Win32_console ). Win 7+ ships with at least 3 shells: cmd.exe and PowerShell as well as the GUI shell explorer.exe (+ shell32.dll). ADS (called Zone.Identifier) are added by Internet Explorer and recently by other browsers to mark files downloaded from external sites as possibly unsafe to run.
  - gecko 12y ago
    OS X uses HFS+ resource forks for a variety of things, beginning around 10.4. Prior to Mavericks, they were used to handle ACLs, to track Time Machine metadata, to track whether a file was downloaded or native to the file system (which in turn shows up as a Finder warning when launching applications you downloaded from the Internet) and where it was downloaded from, and some other minor things. Beginning with Mavericks, they were also used to support giving files arbitrary tags, which is what I had in mind. You can read more about the implementation at http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/10/os-x-10-9/9/ http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/10/os-x-10-9/9/ . Notably, while all of the above use resource forks, they're not exposed to the user directly as resource forks, but rather as additional Finder widgets and behaviors.