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authorThomas Schwinge <thomas@codesourcery.com>2018-05-25 15:35:17 +0200
committerThomas Schwinge <thomas@codesourcery.com>2018-05-25 15:35:17 +0200
commiteda7364b16b318c7209e60b9699d672cc599e040 (patch)
tree378f1131d25e31cdc9eba37ff2d2946d284c7cca /community/gsoc
parenta6844c659acd25e913b1d20e48610765352bd10e (diff)
Revert page removal of "Drop xattr project idea, it's done"
..., to avoid breaking existing links. Instead, mark as obsolete. This reverts parts of commit a6844c659acd25e913b1d20e48610765352bd10e.
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+[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2009, 2016, 2018 Free Software Foundation,
+Inc."]]
+
+[[!meta license="""[[!toggle id="license" text="GFDL 1.2+"]][[!toggleable
+id="license" text="Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
+document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
+any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant
+Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license
+is included in the section entitled
+[[GNU Free Documentation License|/fdl]]."]]"""]]
+
+[[!meta title="Implement xattr Support"]]
+
+[[!template id=highlight text="""/!\ Obsolete /!\
+
+---
+
+This is no longer valid as a Google Summer of Code project; it's done."""]]
+
+
+Extended attributes (xattr) are a standardized, generic method for storing
+additional metadata along with a file (inode). Most modern UNIX filesystems
+support xattrs.
+
+In general, xattrs should be used sparingly, as they are less transparent than
+data stored as explicit file contents; however, there are some cases where they
+really make sense. The Hurd's variant of ext2 presently uses some additional
+fields in the inode to store Hurd-specific metadata: most notable passive
+translator settings. As these fields are Hurd-specific, they can't be accessed
+by the standard methods from Linux for example, so it's not possible to fully
+work with a Hurd filesystem on GNU/Linux (copy, backup etc.); and also, even
+when on Hurd, only tools that explicitly support the Hurd-specific information
+can handle them.
+
+Using extended attributes instead of custom fields for the Hurd-specific
+information would be very helpful.
+
+The most important goal of this project thus is to make the Hurd ext2fs server
+able to store and read the Hurd-specific information with extended attributes
+instead of the custom fields, so it become accessible from other systems. Being
+able to access the information through the standard xattr API instead of
+Hurd-specific calls is also desirable. (And in turn requires implementing the
+generic xattr API first, which can be useful for other purposes as well.)
+
+Completing this project will require digging into some parts of the Hurd, but
+it should be quite doable without previous Hurd experience. Some experience
+with xattrs might help a bit, but shouldn't be really necessary either.
+
+Some previous work on xattr support is [[available|open_issues/xattr]], and
+might serve as a starting point.