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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] file streams & metadata
From: smalyshev@sugarcrm.com (Stas Malyshev)

Hi!

> The more I read what you say the more I think that what you want is
> not a working stream implementation to do filesystem ops, but a way to
> emulate a virtual file system using stream. I don't think it is the
> goal of our stream implementation to do that. Tools like FuseFS are

I think our stream implementation is perfectly fine to do that, if one 
hole in it - the fact that some important functions completely ignore 
streams - is plugged. I don't need all-encompassing megapowerful 
super-portable virtual FS layer that would work in every OS imaginable 
and satisfy any scenario one could ever think of. I just need to be able 
to pass mystream://file to the app and be sure my app works. Right now I 
can't do that because chmod() and touch() break. Judging from vfsStream 
example (currently recommended solution for FS testing btw) I am not 
only one having this problem. If you have a solution that could do the 
same (namely, having PHP control access to files) in any other way - 
please tell me. But a practical way that can be done in reasonable time.

> more appropriate and I can certainly do similar things on Windows as
> well. I have done that in the past for debugging purposes and we could
> certainly provide something as well.

I'm not going to prevent you from writing a FUSE driver in PHP and also 
making it work on Linux, Windows, Mac, FreeBSD, etc. However, I have no 
idea how to do it and nobody else did it so far, AFAIK. I, however, have 
pretty good idea about how to make streams work, so I don't see how 
"let's design a new system 100% from scratch and implement it" is better 
than "let's fix existing and widely used system by adding missing 10% of 
functionality".
If you can do better and implement your FUSE solution and it works 
better than extending streams - be my guest.

> I disagree for the reasons I explained earlier. It is even useless as
> it will be a very limited version.

Did you just claim you know better than me what is useful for me? Nice 
:) But again vfsStream example shows it will be useful not only for 
myself but for many others. Your argument is that since it doesn't cover 
some fringe case which nobody currently uses and nobody ever asked for 
it's useless. Sorry, not buying it. It is no more limited than existing 
FS functions, and we're doing fine with them.
-- 
Stanislav Malyshev, Software Architect
SugarCRM: http://www.sugarcrm.com/
(408)454-6900 ext. 227