Re: httpfs, tarfs --help

[Adam Olsen]

On Fri, Dec 21, 2001 at 03:16:34PM +0100, Jeroen Dekkers wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 21, 2001 at 01:39:39PM +0100, Marcus Brinkmann wrote:
> > However, if you don't pass an argument to tarfs, it can assume that the tar
> > file is what we call the underlying file of the translator.
> > 
> > If you have a file /tmp/foo, you can put a translator on /tmp/foo while
> > keeping the original file intact.  All normal file accesses go to the
> > translator though, the file is "hidden", it lies under the translator
> > (underlying file).  But the translator always gets a port to its underlying
> > file, so it can access it.  This case is what I wanted to illustrate.
> 
> Is it possible to make that transparant? I.e. you can just cd into a
> tarfile without using settrans first, because somethings detects the
> tar.gz extensions and knows to run the tarfs translator on that.
> 
> I've been thinking about two ways to do that:
> 1) Set the translator field of every tarfile to /hurd/tarfs.
> 2) Use some special `extensions translator' which automatically sets
> translators for files with known extensions.
3) as 2, but triggered when you you have a "foo.tar.gz" file and try
to open "foo".  Probably useful when other programs recognise the .gz
extension and try to open it as a zip file.  (well, I suppose the
dir/file distinction would protect foo.tar.gz files, but plain foo.gz
files would still be vulnerable)


> I don't know if there are other ways to do it. I think it's nice to have
> this feature. It looks a bit like how midnight commander (or the old
> non-free norton commander for dos) handles tar (or zip) files.

More important than if you *can* make it transparent, is if you *want*
to make it transparent.  But I think it's definetely worth
implimenting.


-- 
Adam Olsen, aka Rhamphoryncus