I was just wondering, if we could implement symbolic links in ReactOS. As I don't want to add this feature to every filesystem that doesn't support symbolic links, I thought about another way. I had two ideas: 1. Use a file for this, comparable to files like HOSTS etc 2. Use the registry
The more I thought about this, I liked my second idea more than my first and noticed what a great thing the registry is. We could simply add keys like HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\symlinks\C:\My Files and set the target directory as it's value. It's very easy to search for such keys, so it shouldn't be that hard to implement it into the IFS-driver. More complicated would be the implementation into explorer and the creation of a commandline utility. A second feature could be to create such links for every user, so that every user could use C:\My Files... which would be linked to C:\Documents and Settings\Username\My Files... and he wouldn't even notice.
I think that would be a nice feature and I would really like to implement this, but I'm afraid I can't do this alone, as I don't have much experience and I'm just beginning to learn C++ and asm, so it would be nice, if someone of you who likes this idea could help me with this.
Greets,
David Hinz
Why not include a system service that implements a metadata server to create the symlinks for you. It would be simple to do with a sleepycat db or embedded mysql engine. Of course the links would have to be accessible by other processes and applications to be add to the whole experience. Or wait until an NTFS port comes into works and then implement symlinks then... Either way they are going to have to be written into the filesystem one way or the other. On Nov 30, 2005, at 3:31 PM, David Hinz wrote:
I was just wondering, if we could implement symbolic links in ReactOS. As I don't want to add this feature to every filesystem that doesn't support symbolic links, I thought about another way. I had two ideas:
- Use a file for this, comparable to files like HOSTS etc
- Use the registry
The more I thought about this, I liked my second idea more than my first and noticed what a great thing the registry is. We could simply add keys like HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\symlinks\C: \My Files and set the target directory as it's value. It's very easy to search for such keys, so it shouldn't be that hard to implement it into the IFS-driver. More complicated would be the implementation into explorer and the creation of a commandline utility. A second feature could be to create such links for every user, so that every user could use C:\My Files... which would be linked to C:\Documents and Settings\Username\My Files... and he wouldn't even notice.
I think that would be a nice feature and I would really like to implement this, but I'm afraid I can't do this alone, as I don't have much experience and I'm just beginning to learn C++ and asm, so it would be nice, if someone of you who likes this idea could help me with this.
Greets,
David Hinz _______________________________________________ Ros-dev mailing list Ros-dev@reactos.org http://www.reactos.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev
Why should I implement a service that provides me a db if I could just use the registry, that works perfectly? This service would make sense if we would use it for other purposes like additional informations about files and so on, but I think my idea is much more easier to implement. I don't say, it's the best for the future, but it is capable of what I want it to be, doesn't need many resources and adds a nice feature to ROS, NT was always lacking. And I don't want to wait until an NTFS port comes into works, because that might be in 3 or 4 years and who knows what filesystems we are using then... maybe already our own, created by Hans Reiser, because I hates Linus Torvalds for not integrating Reiser4 into the Linux kernel and wants revenge... who knows, but such a FS would be very fast... Enough ot...
What I wanted to say is, I want ROS to be capable of symlinks and this completely independent of the FS it is using. I think theres no need to implement this into the FS, maybe wo could write a backup of these regkeys to the harddisk, so they can be imported into other ROS-installations, but that's not that important now.
Greets,
David Hinz
Rick Langschultz schrieb:
Why not include a system service that implements a metadata server to create the symlinks for you. It would be simple to do with a sleepycat db or embedded mysql engine. Of course the links would have to be accessible by other processes and applications to be add to the whole experience. Or wait until an NTFS port comes into works and then implement symlinks then... Either way they are going to have to be written into the filesystem one way or the other. _______________________________________________ Ros-dev mailing list Ros-dev@reactos.org http://www.reactos.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev
Use the registry? For symbolic links? Extra file info? Are you kidding me? You DO know why Windows tends to slow down over time right? Over the months/years the registry gets more and more cluttered with...junk. What happens when you delete a file? What happens if the file gets nuked via a disk error? What happens if a user doesn't WANT symbolic links taking up precious memory (and just because you can get a GB of RAM for $70, a 200 GB HD for under $100, doesn't mean you should try and use all that space on operating system code. See Vista for an example*)
A service with an integrated db engine is the best way to go if you want to do that, but please remember that NTFS already has support for symbolic links.
Not to say that your idea isn't a good one...it's just better off as a system service, as suggested earlier.
David Hinz wrote:
Why should I implement a service that provides me a db if I could just use the registry, that works perfectly? This service would make sense if we would use it for other purposes like additional informations about files and so on, but I think my idea is much more easier to implement. I don't say, it's the best for the future, but it is capable of what I want it to be, doesn't need many resources and adds a nice feature to ROS, NT was always lacking. And I don't want to wait until an NTFS port comes into works, because that might be in 3 or 4 years and who knows what filesystems we are using then... maybe already our own, created by Hans Reiser, because I hates Linus Torvalds for not integrating Reiser4 into the Linux kernel and wants revenge... who knows, but such a FS would be very fast... Enough ot...
What I wanted to say is, I want ROS to be capable of symlinks and this completely independent of the FS it is using. I think theres no need to implement this into the FS, maybe wo could write a backup of these regkeys to the harddisk, so they can be imported into other ROS-installations, but that's not that important now.
Greets,
David Hinz
Rick Langschultz schrieb:
Why not include a system service that implements a metadata server to create the symlinks for you. It would be simple to do with a sleepycat db or embedded mysql engine. Of course the links would have to be accessible by other processes and applications to be add to the whole experience. Or wait until an NTFS port comes into works and then implement symlinks then... Either way they are going to have to be written into the filesystem one way or the other. _______________________________________________ Ros-dev mailing list Ros-dev@reactos.org http://www.reactos.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev
Ros-dev mailing list Ros-dev@reactos.org http://www.reactos.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev
I was thinking more of a self-optimizing database service that would allow indexing of files, submitting and retreiving metadata information, extended file permissions and DRM (evil) if needed. Also it could be built on something small like MySQL with an InnoDB backend or even sleepycats or perhaps MaxDB from Mysql because they provide the XML indexing engine which could prove very useful when modifying data through notepad. Also the service could be controlled like Spotlight in Mac OS X Tiger. This indexing service could index different file types also and symbolic links would hold higher privilege that indexed files. Using the registry is illogical because the system goes through each of those keys on startup and loading...
Also with a new explorer interface the XML engine could interact with explorer and the desktop in an attempt to create a better ReactOS interface. On Nov 30, 2005, at 5:57 PM, Richard wrote:
Use the registry? For symbolic links? Extra file info? Are you kidding me? You DO know why Windows tends to slow down over time right? Over the months/years the registry gets more and more cluttered with...junk. What happens when you delete a file? What happens if the file gets nuked via a disk error? What happens if a user doesn't WANT symbolic links taking up precious memory (and just because you can get a GB of RAM for $70, a 200 GB HD for under $100, doesn't mean you should try and use all that space on operating system code. See Vista for an example*)
A service with an integrated db engine is the best way to go if you want to do that, but please remember that NTFS already has support for symbolic links.
Not to say that your idea isn't a good one...it's just better off as a system service, as suggested earlier.
David Hinz wrote:
Why should I implement a service that provides me a db if I could just use the registry, that works perfectly? This service would make sense if we would use it for other purposes like additional informations about files and so on, but I think my idea is much more easier to implement. I don't say, it's the best for the future, but it is capable of what I want it to be, doesn't need many resources and adds a nice feature to ROS, NT was always lacking. And I don't want to wait until an NTFS port comes into works, because that might be in 3 or 4 years and who knows what filesystems we are using then... maybe already our own, created by Hans Reiser, because I hates Linus Torvalds for not integrating Reiser4 into the Linux kernel and wants revenge... who knows, but such a FS would be very fast... Enough ot...
What I wanted to say is, I want ROS to be capable of symlinks and this completely independent of the FS it is using. I think theres no need to implement this into the FS, maybe wo could write a backup of these regkeys to the harddisk, so they can be imported into other ROS-installations, but that's not that important now.
Greets,
David Hinz
Rick Langschultz schrieb:
Why not include a system service that implements a metadata server to create the symlinks for you. It would be simple to do with a sleepycat db or embedded mysql engine. Of course the links would have to be accessible by other processes and applications to be add to the whole experience. Or wait until an NTFS port comes into works and then implement symlinks then... Either way they are going to have to be written into the filesystem one way or the other. _______________________________________________ Ros-dev mailing list Ros-dev@reactos.org http://www.reactos.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev
Ros-dev mailing list Ros-dev@reactos.org http://www.reactos.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev
Ros-dev mailing list Ros-dev@reactos.org http://www.reactos.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev
Well, if you add these features or plan to add them in the near future, the service with the MySQL or whatever db would be better for this, I just said that I like my idea more than yours, because it is easier to implement. It is true, that the registry would become larger by this, but how many symbolic links do you want to use? 10000? I think there wouldn't be much more than 100 of those links (and if there were many more, it would just show, how important this feature was...), so how slow would a PC have to be that this feature would slow it measurably down?
To say it again, the idea with the db is good, but it is only better than mine, if you really want to implement the features you mentioned, because otherwise it would waste a lot of cpu-time and RAM.
@Richard: Windows doesn't slow down because of the registry (the german pc-magazine c't prooved that some months ago), I think it is because of full and very fragmented harddisks...
Greets,
David Hinz
Rick Langschultz schrieb:
I was thinking more of a self-optimizing database service that would allow indexing of files, submitting and retreiving metadata information, extended file permissions and DRM (evil) if needed. Also it could be built on something small like MySQL with an InnoDB backend or even sleepycats or perhaps MaxDB from Mysql because they provide the XML indexing engine which could prove very useful when modifying data through notepad. Also the service could be controlled like Spotlight in Mac OS X Tiger. This indexing service could index different file types also and symbolic links would hold higher privilege that indexed files. Using the registry is illogical because the system goes through each of those keys on startup and loading...
Also with a new explorer interface the XML engine could interact with explorer and the desktop in an attempt to create a better ReactOS interface. On Nov 30, 2005, at 5:57 PM, Richard wrote:
Use the registry? For symbolic links? Extra file info? Are you kidding me? You DO know why Windows tends to slow down over time right? Over the months/years the registry gets more and more cluttered with...junk. What happens when you delete a file? What happens if the file gets nuked via a disk error? What happens if a user doesn't WANT symbolic links taking up precious memory (and just because you can get a GB of RAM for $70, a 200 GB HD for under $100, doesn't mean you should try and use all that space on operating system code. See Vista for an example*)
A service with an integrated db engine is the best way to go if you want to do that, but please remember that NTFS already has support for symbolic links.
Not to say that your idea isn't a good one...it's just better off as a system service, as suggested earlier.
It is a very good idea to implement symbolic links in the registry; however, i do find it very difficult to navigate a registry key with hundreds of subkeys. Instead I would rather the system choose how to index the data. Understandibly CPU load and RAM are key factors in implementing such a service but until system services are implemented i find it difficult to complete my part of the feature. Using the registry now is a great place to start. However without rewriting Explorer to interpret those links it will take some amount of time.
On Dec 1, 2005, at 7:08 AM, David Hinz wrote:
Well, if you add these features or plan to add them in the near future, the service with the MySQL or whatever db would be better for this, I just said that I like my idea more than yours, because it is easier to implement. It is true, that the registry would become larger by this, but how many symbolic links do you want to use? 10000? I think there wouldn't be much more than 100 of those links (and if there were many more, it would just show, how important this feature was...), so how slow would a PC have to be that this feature would slow it measurably down?
To say it again, the idea with the db is good, but it is only better than mine, if you really want to implement the features you mentioned, because otherwise it would waste a lot of cpu-time and RAM.
@Richard: Windows doesn't slow down because of the registry (the german pc-magazine c't prooved that some months ago), I think it is because of full and very fragmented harddisks...
Greets,
David Hinz
Rick Langschultz schrieb:
I was thinking more of a self-optimizing database service that would allow indexing of files, submitting and retreiving metadata information, extended file permissions and DRM (evil) if needed. Also it could be built on something small like MySQL with an InnoDB backend or even sleepycats or perhaps MaxDB from Mysql because they provide the XML indexing engine which could prove very useful when modifying data through notepad. Also the service could be controlled like Spotlight in Mac OS X Tiger. This indexing service could index different file types also and symbolic links would hold higher privilege that indexed files. Using the registry is illogical because the system goes through each of those keys on startup and loading... Also with a new explorer interface the XML engine could interact with explorer and the desktop in an attempt to create a better ReactOS interface. On Nov 30, 2005, at 5:57 PM, Richard wrote:
Use the registry? For symbolic links? Extra file info? Are you kidding me? You DO know why Windows tends to slow down over time right? Over the months/years the registry gets more and more cluttered with...junk. What happens when you delete a file? What happens if the file gets nuked via a disk error? What happens if a user doesn't WANT symbolic links taking up precious memory (and just because you can get a GB of RAM for $70, a 200 GB HD for under $100, doesn't mean you should try and use all that space on operating system code. See Vista for an example*)
A service with an integrated db engine is the best way to go if you want to do that, but please remember that NTFS already has support for symbolic links.
Not to say that your idea isn't a good one...it's just better off as a system service, as suggested earlier.
Ros-dev mailing list Ros-dev@reactos.org http://www.reactos.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev
I don't have to change anything in explorer, I just have to add this feature to IFS. The only thing I could add to explorer is the ability of creating symbolic links.
Greets,
David Hinz
Rick Langschultz schrieb:
It is a very good idea to implement symbolic links in the registry; however, i do find it very difficult to navigate a registry key with hundreds of subkeys. Instead I would rather the system choose how to index the data. Understandibly CPU load and RAM are key factors in implementing such a service but until system services are implemented i find it difficult to complete my part of the feature. Using the registry now is a great place to start. However without rewriting Explorer to interpret those links it will take some amount of time.
On Dec 1, 2005, at 7:08 AM, David Hinz wrote:
Well, if you add these features or plan to add them in the near future, the service with the MySQL or whatever db would be better for this, I just said that I like my idea more than yours, because it is easier to implement. It is true, that the registry would become larger by this, but how many symbolic links do you want to use? 10000? I think there wouldn't be much more than 100 of those links (and if there were many more, it would just show, how important this feature was...), so how slow would a PC have to be that this feature would slow it measurably down?
To say it again, the idea with the db is good, but it is only better than mine, if you really want to implement the features you mentioned, because otherwise it would waste a lot of cpu-time and RAM.
@Richard: Windows doesn't slow down because of the registry (the german pc-magazine c't prooved that some months ago), I think it is because of full and very fragmented harddisks...
Greets,
David Hinz
Rick Langschultz schrieb:
I was thinking more of a self-optimizing database service that would allow indexing of files, submitting and retreiving metadata information, extended file permissions and DRM (evil) if needed. Also it could be built on something small like MySQL with an InnoDB backend or even sleepycats or perhaps MaxDB from Mysql because they provide the XML indexing engine which could prove very useful when modifying data through notepad. Also the service could be controlled like Spotlight in Mac OS X Tiger. This indexing service could index different file types also and symbolic links would hold higher privilege that indexed files. Using the registry is illogical because the system goes through each of those keys on startup and loading... Also with a new explorer interface the XML engine could interact with explorer and the desktop in an attempt to create a better ReactOS interface. On Nov 30, 2005, at 5:57 PM, Richard wrote:
Use the registry? For symbolic links? Extra file info? Are you kidding me? You DO know why Windows tends to slow down over time right? Over the months/years the registry gets more and more cluttered with...junk. What happens when you delete a file? What happens if the file gets nuked via a disk error? What happens if a user doesn't WANT symbolic links taking up precious memory (and just because you can get a GB of RAM for $70, a 200 GB HD for under $100, doesn't mean you should try and use all that space on operating system code. See Vista for an example*)
A service with an integrated db engine is the best way to go if you want to do that, but please remember that NTFS already has support for symbolic links.
Not to say that your idea isn't a good one...it's just better off as a system service, as suggested earlier.
Ros-dev mailing list Ros-dev@reactos.org http://www.reactos.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev
Ros-dev mailing list Ros-dev@reactos.org http://www.reactos.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev
I think the main problem when using the registry is that the registry is part of the system itself and so is alwalys saved on the system partition. If you install ReactOS multiple times, you cannot have access to the symbolic links created by another system. So a part of the registry would have to be on every logical partition affected by symbolic links. The symbolic link has to be saved on the partition where the real file is and on the partition where the symbolic file is. And you have to solve another problem: If someone changes the partiton table, all names of the partitions (like H: and also PhysicalDrivex) are changed. So all symbolic links that go to another partition couldn't be used any more.
tobitosso
--- David Hinz post.center@gmail.com schrieb:
I don't have to change anything in explorer, I just have to add this feature to IFS. The only thing I could add to explorer is the ability of creating symbolic links.
Greets,
David Hinz
Rick Langschultz schrieb:
It is a very good idea to implement symbolic links
in the registry;
however, i do find it very difficult to navigate a
registry key with
hundreds of subkeys. Instead I would rather the
system choose how to
index the data. Understandibly CPU load and RAM
are key factors in
implementing such a service but until system
services are implemented i
find it difficult to complete my part of the
feature. Using the registry
now is a great place to start. However without
rewriting Explorer to
interpret those links it will take some amount of
time.
On Dec 1, 2005, at 7:08 AM, David Hinz wrote:
Well, if you add these features or plan to add
them in the near
future, the service with the MySQL or whatever db
would be better for
this, I just said that I like my idea more than
yours, because it is
easier to implement. It is true, that the registry would become larger
by this, but how
many symbolic links do you want to use? 10000? I think there wouldn't be much more than 100 of
those links (and if
there were many more, it would just show, how
important this feature
was...), so how slow would a PC have to be that
this feature would
slow it measurably down?
To say it again, the idea with the db is good,
but it is only better
than mine, if you really want to implement the
features you mentioned,
because otherwise it would waste a lot of
cpu-time and RAM.
@Richard: Windows doesn't slow down because of
the registry (the
german pc-magazine c't prooved that some months
ago), I think it is
because of full and very fragmented harddisks...
Greets,
David Hinz
Rick Langschultz schrieb:
I was thinking more of a self-optimizing
database service that would
allow indexing of files, submitting and
retreiving metadata
information, extended file permissions and DRM
(evil) if needed. Also
it could be built on something small like MySQL
with an InnoDB
backend or even sleepycats or perhaps MaxDB from
Mysql because they
provide the XML indexing engine which could
prove very useful when
modifying data through notepad. Also the service
could be controlled
like Spotlight in Mac OS X Tiger. This indexing
service could index
different file types also and symbolic links
would hold higher
privilege that indexed files. Using the registry
is illogical because
the system goes through each of those keys on
startup and loading...
Also with a new explorer interface the XML
engine could interact with
explorer and the desktop in an attempt to create
a better ReactOS
interface. On Nov 30, 2005, at 5:57 PM, Richard wrote:
Use the registry? For symbolic links? Extra
file info? Are you
kidding me? You DO know why Windows tends to
slow down over time
right? Over the months/years the registry gets
more and more
cluttered with...junk. What happens when you
delete a file? What
happens if the file gets nuked via a disk
error? What happens if a
user doesn't WANT symbolic links taking up
precious memory (and
just because you can get a GB of RAM for $70, a
200 GB HD for under
$100, doesn't mean you should try and use all
that space on
operating system code. See Vista for an
example*)
A service with an integrated db engine is the
best way to go if you
want to do that, but please remember that NTFS
already has support
for symbolic links.
Not to say that your idea isn't a good
one...it's just better off as
a system service, as suggested earlier.
Ros-dev mailing list Ros-dev@reactos.org http://www.reactos.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev
Ros-dev mailing list Ros-dev@reactos.org http://www.reactos.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev
Ros-dev mailing list Ros-dev@reactos.org http://www.reactos.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev
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David Hinz wrote:
I was just wondering, if we could implement symbolic links in ReactOS. As I don't want to add this feature to every filesystem that doesn't support symbolic links, I thought about another way. I had two ideas:
- Use a file for this, comparable to files like HOSTS etc
- Use the registry
NTFS supports Junctions, which are the same as symbolic links. Some people say they're more like hardlinks, but hardlinks don't span multiple drives or even network shares. More info: http://www.answers.com/topic/ntfs-junction-point http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q205524 http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Junction.html
Expect the functionality to be there when ReactOS gets an NTFS driver.
mf
-
David Hinz -
mf -
Richard -
Rick Langschultz -
tobitosso