Moving Baloo forward

[Martin Steigerwald]

Am Dienstag, 28. Januar 2014, 08:03:54 schrieb Rolf Eike Beer:
> Am Freitag, 24. Januar 2014, 15:59:12 schrieb Vadim Zhukov:
> > 2014/1/24 Sebastian Kügler <sebas at kde.org>:
> > > On Friday, January 24, 2014 01:24:54 Vadim Zhukov wrote:
> > >> in the best case you'll have two totally different codepaths
> > >> that you'll have to manage.
> > > 
> > > This should be "worst case", I think. In the best case, there's xattr
> > > support, meaning another code path isn't needed.
> > 
> > It's doubtful at least whether xattr support is a good thing, because
> > it's too easily gets misused: for example, there were viruses on
> > Windows which effectively hidden themselves in NTFS streams. And there
> > are personal data leaking issues I've pointed out earlier. But the
> > question "xarttrs: to be or not to be everywhere" is totally offtopic,
> > because it's what OS developers should decide.
> 
> I am against storing metadata in xattrs, but more for personal opinion than
> for anything I can express in technical terms. What could be done and which
> uses xattrs for what I seem them for is to just store a unique identifier in
> the xattrs (e.g. a GUID) which makes it easier to map the file to its
> metadata in the database, maybe together with some sort of checksum to
> detect modifications. That way no accidential information leak will happen
> if that thing is copied elsewhere.

Storing metadata in xattrs makes a really nice feature possible:

To move a file to another machine and have the metadata be copied and re-
indexed on that new machine as well. The copy process just needs to take care 
of transfering the xattr. This can even work when using a USB stick or so as 
interim medium.

A database ID would not be sufficient for that.

Actually I very much like that as a feature. With current Nepomuk I expect to 
loose any key words and other metadata when I transfer some files to another 
machine. Of course, if its just my user data I can also transfer my complete 
home directory when migrating to a new box. But any exchange of data between 
users will use any and all metadata that is not directly stored in the file 
unless they are transferred somehow like via xattr.

-- 
Martin 'Helios' Steigerwald - http://www.Lichtvoll.de
GPG: 03B0 0D6C 0040 0710 4AFA  B82F 991B EAAC A599 84C7
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 198 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part.
URL: <http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-core-devel/attachments/20140128/adcb71b4/attachment.sig>