extended attribute standardization

[Fred Drake]

On 11/19/06, Michael Burschik <Michael.Burschik at gmx.de> wrote:
> If you want to query a large
> number of files, then speed will be of considerable importance. Parsing
> complex files will certainly take a lot longer than reading extended
> attributes.

On the other hand, a cache could be applied very easily; it may even
be that the cache could be stored in xattrs.

One issue I have with using xattrs for storing anything not specific
to a single application is that it's not cross-platform: some systems
don't have them enabled, and some filesystems just don't support them
at all.  If I want to write an application that works on any of
Unix/Linux/Windows/Mac OS, using xattrs makes little sense.  A library
that handles file-type plugins for metadata extraction would be very
nice, however.  If it lets me store additional metadata that can't be
embedded in the files, that would be nice, but that's something I
could handle in my app if I really need it.

Extended attributes are really neat, but without wider support, it's
hard to justify using them at this point.


  -Fred

-- 
Fred L. Drake, Jr.    <fdrake at gmail.com>
"Every sin is the result of a collaboration." --Lucius Annaeus Seneca