file/libmagic

[Richard Moore]

On Thursday 15 May 2003 15:22, Thomas Leonard wrote:
> On Fri, May 16, 2003 at 12:22:22AM +1000, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> > <quote who="Thomas Leonard">
> >
> > > The people who currently maintain the various existing MIME databases
> > > should ask for CVS access on freedesktop.org so that they can update
> > > the central database (and, perhaps, make new releases).
> > >
> > > There should be a list of such people on the site so people know where
> > > to send corrections and additions.
> >
> > (Are we / Why aren't we) cooperating with the maintainers of file, and
> > using the existing system that is deployed on countless systems already?
> > Why are we using an entirely new format?
>
> The maintainer of file suggested it would be better to use a binary
> format, based on the existing format. This is what we are using. It is
> very easy to convert. Updating Geoff Youngs' freemime library from a
> text based format to the new binary format required a patch which added
> 473 lines, and removed 2016. The total size of the library after this was
> 1026 lines. Thus, the binary format makes it much easier for people to
> implement the specification, and removes a likely source of bugs.

I wonder if it might not be better to take an approach like the one we (KDE) 
use in KSycoca and make the text format the definitive copy but to generate a 
binary cache of the contents. In KDE we take things a little further and 
monitor the files used to create the cache for changes, but even without 
that, this approach has the advantage of maintaining the master files in a 
human editable format. The ability to recreate the cache on demand also 
removes a single point of failure.

Cheers

Rich.