GSoC: Semantic File System

[Robert Watson]

On Tue, 7 Apr 2009, Stephan Lichtenauer wrote:

> 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.

Actually, I have a original copy of the book on the bookshelf behind me. :-)

Robert N M Watson
Computer Laboratory
University of Cambridge