[Geany-devel] Persistency

[Enrico Tröger]

On Mon, 15 Dec 2008 22:09:16 +0100, Stephan Aßmus <superstippi at gmx.de>
wrote:


>> >> > persistency information were stored with each individual files
>> >> > instead? Can't file metadata/attributes be used for this? (That
>> >> > being said, I don't even know if Ubuntu has xattr support turned
>> >> > on by default...) That method would be much more robust and
>> >> > scalable.
>> >> 
>> >> Not sure if it would be portable then.
>> >
>> >I think the Linux kernel will support it through an emulation
>> >layer, if
>> 
>> Cool if Linux does this. What about FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, HP-UX,
>> Solaris, Windows, MacOSX, ...?
>
>My argumentation is simple: 1) Persistency is a must-have, certainly
>for cursor and scrolling offset. 2) There is no other way, really, to

which we already have for session files and projects.
Additionally, cursor position and scrolling offset is mostly the same
or better, a set cursor position implies scrolling it into view.
(Except the case where the cursor is outside of the shown text part
but it is rather weird to make this persistent.)


>store it elsewhere than with the file itself. Since you cannot modify
>the actual file contents, meta-data is the only option. If you know of
>any better way, which also supports systems that don't support file
>meta data... the alternative - no persistency - is really not an
>option for me.

I basically agree that meta-data is the best solution in theory. I'm
just not sure how portable it is but as you said it's probably better
than I assumed. Though it still fits better in a plugin than in Geany
itself.
I know such a feature from Mighnight Commander which stores cursor
positions per file in a file in its configuration directory.
But of course, this has the problems you already mentioned (no
cleaning, the config file still has data for deleted/moved files, ...).
Anyway, maybe this could be a start for such a plugin to get the
desired feature working at all first and then later move the storage
'backend' from a plain text file to FS attributes.
Such a plugin with a simple text file for storage should be fairly easy
and quickly to write.


>BTW, I know for sure that at least MacOS-X has xattr support, Solaris
>ZFS has file meta-data as well and I would be pretty surprised if the
>BSDs don't have xattr... Windows NTFS has meta-data... hm, that leaves
>HP-UX from your list, but only because I don't know anything about it.

Me neither, I just mentioned HP-UX as a kind of non-mainstream OS (from
an end-user point of view).


>> >the filesystem has no support or has it turned off (at least so I
>> >heard). So it's more a matter of wheather the API is available. But
>> >what's the alternative, anyways? It would mean to create and
>> >maintain a separate settings file for each file Geany ever opened
>> >(or some database). And if the file is moved/renamed, there go the
>> >settings. Worse yet, settings files will linger for files which may
>> >have long been deleted. No, storing the settings *with* the file is
>> >really the only solution. If the kernel or filesystem don't have
>> >support for metadata, bad luck.
>> 
>> Hmm, I don't think it's worth adding support for this when we know
>> before that only a few systems will support it at all.
>
>No offense, but you may want to re-check how many "few" actually is.

Hopefully you are right and I'm wrong, that'd be actually cool :).

Regards,
Enrico

-- 
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