On Tue, 06 Dec 2005 15:44:07 +0000, John Marshall wrote:
> The goal is to be able to keep some meta-data
> for each file/directory of a directory hierarchy
> in a separate directory: one meta-data file per
> file/directory.
So you are planning on shadowing the entire file system with a single
massive directory? Ouch.
Off the top of my head, you could try shadowing the directory tree:
root
+---directory1
+ +---file1
+ +---file2
+---directory2
+ +---file1
+---+SHADOW-METADATA
+ +---directory1-METADATA
+ + +---file1-METADATA
+ + +---file2-METADATA
+ +---directory2-METADATA
+ + +---file1-METADATA
Then given a pathname, something like this should point to the metadata:
# not tested
def path_realtometa(path):
"""Given a pathname, return the pathname of the metadata."""
if "SHADOW-METADATA" in path:
raise ValueError("Can't shadow a metadata pathname.")
return "SHADOW-METADATA/"+path
I dare say there are complications I haven't thought of, but there are
three major advantages:
- the metadata system is human friendly and not opaque. Your users can
easily clear out dead links, which is difficult to do with the Gnome and
KDE metadata systems.
- your users won't curse the day you were born if they open your metadata
directory with a GUI file manager like Nautilus, as I have done to the
Gnome developers. (Sorry guys, but didn't you ever test Nautilus with a
directory containing 20,000+ thumbnail files?)
- no collisions.
--
Steven.
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