Moving Baloo forward

[Vishesh Handa]

On Tuesday 21 January 2014 13:06:40 vivo75 at gmail.com wrote:
> On 01/21/14 11:50, Vishesh Handa wrote:
> > On Tuesday 21 January 2014 02:24:01 Francesco R. wrote:
> >> just always use an additional database, xattrs are not the way to go.
> >> Managing xattrs require a conscious user, many programs by default don't
> >> even copy xattrs.
> > 
> > I disagree. It'll be easier to backup / restore xattr than it would be
> > with
> > that database. Additionally, a LOT of tools do respect extended attributes
> > (cp with the -a flag), in contrast Nepomuk has never copied any metadata.
> > I doubt I can implement it with the extra database as well.
> > 
> > Plus, with extended attributes the metadata is never lost. With the
> > additional database, if the file is moved to a place which is not
> > tracked, then the data will be lost.
> 
> So we agree to disagree ;)
> especially on the never lost part, when moved with kio they will be
> lost, when using unix command line programs, and without special
> arguments they will be lost.

When copied not moved.

> Most important of all they are normally hidden, more hidden than a .dot
> file, an additional database, even a .dot file is much more easy to
> remember.
> 
> $ echo "Hello" > a
> $ attr -s simple.attibute -V "test for xattr"  ./a
> Attribute "simple.attibute" set to a 14 byte value for ./a:
> test for xattr
> 
> $ kioclient cp a b
> $ attr -l b
> <empty>
> 

kio can be modified :)

> $ cp a b
> $ attr -l b
> <empty>
> 
> $ cp -a a b
> $ attr -l b
> Attribute "simple.attibute" has a 14 byte value for b
> 
> $ rm b
> $ rsync a b
> $ attr -l b
> <empty>
> 
> $ rsync -X a b
> $ attr -l b
> Attribute "simple.attibute" has a 14 byte value for b
>

Maybe we could push distros to enable the -a flag by default? Mac does it by 
default.
 

-- 
Vishesh Handa