Re: [Gnu-arch-users] extended attributes

[Tom Lord]

    > From: Florian Weimer <address@hidden>

    > Tom Lord wrote:

    > > To be more specific: ACLs have a semantics which permits them to be
    > > treated correctly by standard unix filesystem calls.  A mime-type
    > > attribute would not.

    > Isn't this sort of a red herring?

    > Users aren't interested in system calls, but in application
    > behavior.  The system call interface is not sufficiently
    > abstract to hide ACLs from applications (including cp), so
    > application won't automagically behave in the right way
    > (coreutils needed patching, too).

ACLs are designed in such a way that a "classical unix" program,
running an an ACL-enhanced system, behaves in sane, predictable,
useful way.

One may get a program that is _even_more_ useful on the ACL system by
modifying the classical unix program to understand ACLs -- but
basically, they are an upwards compatible hack.

Mime-types, coding systems, and user attributes in general lack that
"upwards compatible" property.

The only user attributes that would _share_ the upwards compatible
property are those that it doesn't matter at all if they're missing
entirely.  But if not having them is just as good as not having them
....

-t