Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Link with permissions

[Robin Farine]

On Thursday 30 September 2004 16.59, address@hidden wrote:

> This makes a lot of sense. And excuse my blindness. When I was
> saying `platform' above it should be substituted for `use case',
> which is far more generic.

I see no blindness ;). It is quite normal that it takes time for
humans' thoughts to synchronize given the path

  thoughts_1 --> language --> thoughts_2
             f()          g()

  where f() and g() are very complicated functions not well known
  yet.

We can be happy when it happens at all. But I digress.

> All in all I like your approach very much.

Thanks for the encouragement :)

> What I'm unconfortable with still is the ad-hoc-ish file format
> you used in the examples.

I agree with the ad-hoc-ish character of the format. It merely
serves as a way of illustrating concrete examples.

> Maybe that's what I aimed at when proposing a way of storing
> generic attributes. An application should be able to extract ``the
> deploy permissions of file foo'' as it is able to extract ``the
> colour of file bar'' without knowing what it *is*; the hook
> scripts know about specific bits and do whatever is necessary
> (separate archival from actions, if you wish).

I get it now. Personally, I am all in favor of files using Tom's
lisp-like extension languague. Each top-level list could define a
group of attributes such as

    (colors
        (foo red)
        ...)
    (permissions
        (...)
        ...)
    ...

I might get "killed" for this though.


Thanks taking the time,

Robin