Re: How to link against diskfs

[olafBuddenhagen]

Hi,

On Wed, May 14, 2008 at 05:59:44PM +0300, Sergiu Ivanov wrote:

> Why would that be the wrong library? isofs uses diskfs, and isofs does
> a similar thing: takes a file and shows it in another way, as a
> directory tree. Isn't the filtering translator supposed to do the same
> thing: take the underlying directory and show it filtered?

The similarity is not very strong. Actually, under such a broad
definition, almost all translators "do a similar thing" :-)

What isofs does is offering access to the filesystem structures (inodes
etc.) contained within a store. Thus it uses libdiskfs -- a library for
"real" filesystems that directly store the filesystem data in the
underlying store. (Usually a disk partition. It can also be a normal
file, but it will still be treated like a "real" store -- just like
loopback devices on other systems, only less awkward...)

> Unfourtunately, I cannot even suppose what another way to write such a
> translator could be :-(

For virtual filesystems, where the filesystem structures are mapped to
something else rather than stored directly, you should use libnetfs.
(Which is a misnomer: libvirtfs or something like that would fit much
better -- just like libdiskfs should rather be named libstorefs...)

-antrik-