Coda File System

Re: Coda 6 Update report

From: Ivan Popov <pin_at_math.chalmers.se>
Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2003 20:06:48 +0200 (MET DST)
Having come back from a long vacation.
Glad to see you again!

Terrible things have been discussed here :)

For the sake of one time migration some people are ready to keep the old
non-global naming scheme indefinitely or make two migrations instead...

Please count my voice for keeping /coda/<realm> as it is now in 6.x
and thus avoid client-side hacks and double migrations to /realms or
similar (note that each new name under "/" pollutes the directory and
somebody will be unhappy with that...)

The most gain from the current naming may be that your compiled software
will be usable outside your administration unit, unless you use
client-side configuration hacks like /usr/something instead of the
canonical and global /coda/<dnsname>

The problem during migration to a global name space is that most of the
admins did not design their naming from a global perspective.

Of course, it is a big job to recompile software - then don't ignore poor
me who already have compiled a lot of globally usable software following
the global canonical names.

Please, no new changes, even if the change that happened is not
confortable for all of us.

Each naming change is painful, the "realms" one opened a lot of
possibilities compared to the old situation, so it is important.
But these possibilities are endangered by the "compatibility" proposals
that I read.

> > >     /coda-realms/			- normal 6.0 root
> > >     /coda -> /coda-realms/local.realm	- a symlink for our current realm

Local links are evil, just imagine a host administered by Math department
but used by Physics' students, what would their scripts find, whose
/coda/.... ???
how would they get to their homedirs ? arrange a forest of links ?

How can we guaranteer that nobody will use the "short paths"? No way.
Then how can we profit from the global ones if the incompatible non-global
paths will be used here and there? They will break in certain situations
and users will be surprised and angry.

> Now the interesting question is, should everyone go this way so that we
> can keep our 'global naming scheme' the same. There are probably not too
> many realms users yet, and for some reason I consider it important that
> everyone uses the same namespace.

The "compatibility layers" introduce different and incompatible
namespaces. Not good.

> mountpoint remains. On the other hand, I would be a bit sad the day we
> actually lose '/coda'.

It would be strange, to change the junction name to something else!

My 2c,
--
Ivan
Received on 2003-08-10 14:09:15