[Revctrl] Something completely different.

[Kevin Smith]

On Thu, 2008-01-24 at 20:54 -0600, Timothy Brownawell wrote:
> On Thu, 2008-01-24 at 11:01 -0500, Kevin Smith wrote:
> > > 
> > > For a mass-market system, I say have a flat space of files, and allow
> > > users to tag them at will to create effects similar to directories.
> > > Allow tagging tags to create multi-level non-hierarchies. Throw in some
> > > nice indexing capabilities so even untagged material is easy to find.
> 
> When I look at the installed files for an application I help maintain, I
> want to see all files for that install regardless of who owns them, but
> not my or anyone else's development copies of those same files.

App X could tag its files with "InstalledByX". It could tag its
exectutables with "Executable", its icons with "Icon", etc. I guess your
question really brings up the need to allow multiple files with the same
name. Yours might be tagged with "Development" and/or
"TimothyBrownawell" so you could distinguish them. Of course then an app
would have to be able to pick which same-named file to load/read/write.

> 
> This works on a normal filesystem because a hierarchical namespace with
> enforced permissions is good at that sort of thing. If we get rid of the
> hierarchy, how does the system differentiate between "favorite
> wallpapers" (~/wallpapers, everyone has their own which may all be
> world-visible but shouldn't interfere with eachother) and "production
> install of BigApp" (/usr/local/BigApp, should mean the same thing to
> everyone but only specified users should be able to set this tag).

Each file would still need permission schemes. Would be great to have
tag-based permissions, both on who can do something (Fred, Mary, GroupA,
GroupB) and what they can do (open, view, write, delete). 

I'm not saying it would be easy. But it would be cool. I remain
convinced that tags are a better choice than hierarchies whenever
feasible.

Kevin