GSoC: Semantic File System

[Stephan Lichtenauer]

Gabriele, Robert,

Am 02.04.2009 um 19:26 schrieb Robert Watson:

>
> In the BeOS model, or my reinterpretation based on something I read  
> a long time ago and then presumably had dreams about, the split is a  
> bit different: the file system maintains indexes of extended  
> attributes, which are written by applications in order to expose  
> searchable material.  For example, a mail application might write  
> out each message as a file, and attach a series of extended  
> attributes, such as subject line, date, author, etc.  These extended  
> attributes are then indexed automatically by the file system in  
> order to allow queries to be evaluated.  I don't recall how queries  
> and results are expressed, and in particular, whether the queries  
> are processed by the file system (possibly exposed via special APIs  
> or the name space) or userspace (accessing special files maintained  
> by the kernel that are the indexes).
>
> It's also worth observing that one of the authors of BFS was Dominic  
> Giampaolo, who now works on Apple's HFS+, and implemented fsevents  
> there as part of their Spotlight project.
>

Maybe you also might be interested that there is a PDF document  
(formerly book) from Dominic available describing the BeOS file system  
in great detail: http://www.haiku-os.org/legacy-docs/practical-file-system-design.pdf

Additionally, there seems to be a GSoC project to create something  
like Spotlight for Haiku, the open source BeOS clone. You could browse  
through the haiku-developer mailing list archives at http://www.freelists.org/archive/haiku-development 
, the thread where this has been discussed is titled "Need Some GSoC  
Advice" with the first mail from 21 March.

Stephan