file(1) / magic(5) database vs shared-mime-info database

[Kip Warner]

On Sat, 2018-02-24 at 14:17 +0100, Bastien Nocera wrote:
> There's probably others, but that's already a good chunk of the
> problems we'd encounter if we used file's database.

In case it's of interest to anyone, I asked file(1) / magic(5)'s
upstream maintainer about whether his mechanism and shared-mime-info
were redundant with each other or whether they were intended to solve
different problems. This was Christos Zoulas's (cc'd) response in
respect of shared-mime-info:

    I have not looked at the code but for the most part getting the
    majority of the file formats that need mime handing does not require
    the complexity that file requires to parse all the weird and
    recursive cases... Also they don't have any performance constraints
    (they don't need to be able to process thousands of files per
    second).  So for them, it is perhaps simpler to parse and maintain a
    separate database.

-- 
Kip Warner | Senior Software Engineer
OpenPGP signed/encrypted mail preferred
https://www.cartesiantheatre.com
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