Archival TOC entry for OS
Jesse Peterson
standard metadata definition. For example ACL custom long text format
defines several ways in which implementation-sepcific ACLs may be
defined.
I'd like to raise the question of whether xar should record the
operating system that xar was running on/compiled for during archival
in order to note that, for whatever of the above metadata may be in
the TOC, where and what said metadata came from and possibly what it
might be for?
- Jesse
Rob Braun
>
> Some metadata may be platform specific within the confines of a
> standard metadata definition. For example ACL custom long text format
> defines several ways in which implementation-sepcific ACLs may be
> defined.
This is tricky. It is specific to something, but specific to what?
Operating system of the host xar is running on may or may not be
indicative of what the metadata is tied to, due to remote filesystems,
filesystems cross mounted between systems (think removable media), etc.
xar does attempt to record the filesystem the metadata came from and
will not by default extract the metadata to a different filesystem
even on the same system. There is a flag to override this and make
a "best effort" to extract all the metadata regardless of the system
it was archived on and being extracted to.
Recording operating system is something I really don't want xar to
get into. Mac OS X and Linux are perfect examples of technologies
changing dramatically between "minor" revisions. We already have
a large number of dimensions we keep track of and adding 2 more
without a concrete example of a problem with the current system,
I'm not inclined to add them.
Rob