Re: New --set-content-location functionality...

On Wednesday 24 August 2005 08:30 pm, Anjan Samanta wrote:
> Not much response on this patch so far; so I'm wondering whether it fell
> into a hole... Is this kind of feature in principle a thumbs-up, a
> thumbs-down, or a needs-thinking-about? I can repost to the general mailing
> list, if that would be better...
> --anjansamanta

hi anjan,

hrvoje and i have been talking about your patch. it seems very interesting to 
me, but i have a couple of questions about it.

first, it seems that your patch is platform-dependent. i guess you wrote it 
for linux, since setxattr has a different interface on osx:

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man2/setxattr.2.html

i also couldn't find setxattr for freebsd. it seems the closest thing is:

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=extattr_get_fd&sektion=2&apropos=0&manpath=FreeBSD+5.4-RELEASE+and+Ports

what about solaris and windows? does your patch have any chance to work on 
those operating systems?

second, your patch seems to be also filesystem dependent. from man attr(5):

       Currently, support for extended attributes is implemented on  Linux  by
       the ext2, ext3 and XFS filesystem patches, which can be downloaded from
       http://acl.bestbits.at/  and  http://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs/  respec-
       tively.

this means that it won't work on, e.g., linux/reiserfs. and i guess there is a 
significant chance to encounter similar issues on other operating systems as 
well.

so, as much as i like your patch, i wonder if merging this code in wget would 
lead to maintanance headaches which are simply not worth the effort.

anyway, before dropping the patch or starting to work on it (by adding support 
for at least freebsd and macosx) in order to merge the code into our svn 
trunk, i would like to know what is the opinion of the other users about the 
--set-content-location feature. if there is a significant interest, i will 
merge it ASAP.

-- 
Aequam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem...

Mauro Tortonesi                          http://www.tortonesi.com

University of Ferrara - Dept. of Eng.    http://www.ing.unife.it
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