File system software???

[Chris Pressey]

On Fri, 28 Jun 2002 17:21:54 +0200 (CEST)
Joe Armstrong <joe@REDACTED> wrote:

> On Thu, 27 Jun 2002, Chris Pressey wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, 27 Jun 2002 10:53:56 +0200 (CEST)
> > Joe Armstrong <joe@REDACTED> wrote:
> > 
> > > 
> > > This isn't an Erlang question but ...
> > > 
> > > Does anybody know of some software I can use for the following:
> > > 
> > >   - I want to create a simple file system *within* a bigger file
> > >   - I want this to be fast and in C
> > > 
> > > I'd really like just the C file manipulation routines fopen/fclose
> > > etc. to create virtual files *within* a single big file.
> > > 
> > >   I would like applications to be distriubuted with a single data
> > >   file
> > > not lots of silly little ones.
> > >   
> > >  The format of the big file is irrelevant (could be ext2, or zip or
> > >  anything)
> > 
> > I'm confused!  Wouldn't the time taken to manipulate files in a
> > compressed archive completely overshadow any time savings gained by it
> > being in C? Write it in Erlang!  It's so much cooler!  :)
> 
> I never said anything about compressed archives... and I don't give a
> hoot about time savings.

Sorry, it slipped my mind that zip files could archive without
compression.  (Also, I was partly joking.  But only partly, because
anything that makes Erlang less dependant on the underlying OS/filesystem
is very cool in my book :)

> Once upon a time I had a mac - when you installed an application you
> moved ONE file into some special directory. When you uninstalled it you
> removed ONE file.
> 
>   In Windows/linux applications are made  of multitudes of files - now
> there mighthave to be lots of  small files in an application but there
> is  no  good  reason why  the  user  should  known  this -  all  files
> (including any new  files created by the application  should be neatly
> hidden away *inside* a container -  also you should not be able to see
> inside the container.

I agree that this makes it much simpler to install and uninstall an
application.  I would be happy if all the installed files were just
installed in the same directory... but anyway...

For the record, zziplib does not seem to support writing files into an
archive.

-Chris