AFT and xattrs

[Jeff Mitchell]

This is something that would definitely not be useful across the board, 
but what about using filesystem extended attributes to store (Amarok 
2.0) AFT info when available?  This would allow the much more robust 
tag-stored-with-file functionality that ATF tried to implement, without 
actually having to touch the tags or files themselves.

I've thought about this for a while, but I recently became aware of the 
fact that LinuxMCE actually does this to watch files as they go around.  
Granted that is a custom-built distro (essentially) so they can rely on 
xattrs in a way that we can't, but they do use it for the same purpose, 
so maybe we could make use of it when available.

One issue is that it may not be portable across filesystems on the same 
machine, but inter-filesystem, it should work well.  So it could be a 
"primary" value for tracking with the AFT method used if the xattr 
method isn't available.

--Jeff