[summerofcode] FileSystemVirtualization - Ideas

[holger krekel]

On Sun, Jun 05, 2005 at 12:13 -0700, Narayan Newton wrote:
> As for the inheritance, I was thinking that there would be some methods that 
> every FS class should have, but are more convenience methods and would 
> pretty much just be wrappers around other class methods. 

Maybe.  IMO it makes sense to keep the lowlevel filesystem 
class/API _very_ minimal and with no fluff so that it is easy to 
implement a new backend.  You might be suprised how difficult it is 
to implement and test common semantics of just a few filesystem 
implementations especially when it comes to clean error 
conditions/uniform exception handling.  

> It would be nice to not have to write this for every FS
> class, just inherit them from the parent. 

Sure enough.  However, Filename and/or URI manipulations
should probably go at a separated layer (call it 'frontend' if
you like) that can make use of filesystem implementations
without a need to subclass.   

cheers, 

    holger