>> >What does 'native' mean?
>> 
>> i meant something along the lines of "verbatim and interoperable
>> copies" of filesystems from other operating systems vs. the stuff like
>> ffs or lfs or ufs (or whatever you call it) that "came with" netbsd.
>
>Uh, but, little or none of the code was taken verbatim from anyplace.

<sigh>  (kicks self in head)  my englihs is not too goodly today.  :)

i meant to imply that under the same set of operations and uses (ie,
creating, moving and deleting a few files or something like that), the
two would be virtually indistinguishable.  i could
(supposedly...although i've never tried it) use ext2fs for my
/usr/local/src and share it with linux on the same machine.

i didn't mean to imply that any code was copied at all.  or "taken
verbatim".  am i making more sense yet?

>And, further, our ffs is interoperable with lots of other systems
>UFS...

yeah...but it's the one that i consider to be netbsd.  i wouldn't
think the same of ext2fs or ntfs or even lfs (since ffs has years more
functionality under its belt).

>> >'native' vs not is an artificial, and i'd say useless, distinction in
>> >this case.
>> 
>> i'm just wondering about the implications.  do they all completely and
>> totally interoperate?  when was the last time you booted netbsd from
>> an ntfs or ext2fs (or even lfs) slice?
>
>I never have -- in fact i'd bet that nobody ever has -- but unless i'm
>mistaken people _have_ booted off of ms-dos file systems, for
>instance.

perhaps...but as a regular course of events?  or just as a proof of
concept?  and i don't mean (again, my mind's not quite together today)
just booting, i mean using it as a root file system in multi-user
mode.

>what do you mean "completely and totally interoperate"?  In general,
>certainly, they've not had as much shake-out as ffs.  Certainly, some
>of them can't support some of the weirder features of the UNIX file
>system (device nodes, symlinks) or have different path name
>limitations.

yep.  i'm aware of that.

>The interesting here in your question above is that you lump ext2fs
>and lfs into the "when was the last time you did..." question.  if
>you're going to take them out of the 'native' file system circle, you
>leave _only_ ffs...

that's because i can't quite make up my mind about lfs.  :)

it certainly "feels" like it ought to be "native", although i've never
used to to my satisfaction, but it's not much like anything i've seen
elsewhere.  it's more "netbsd-ish" to me.  more native.

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