Re: extended attributes and lsextattr/extattr_list_file

[Emmanuel Dreyfus <manu%netbsd.org@localhost>]

On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 09:06:13AM +0000, Emmanuel Dreyfus wrote:
> It is easy to do the conversion so that our Linux-like listexattr() returns
> NUL-separated strings, while our FreeBSD-like extattr_list_file() returns
> one-byte length prefixed strings. The question is what should our vnode
> interface (VOP_LISTEXTATTR) require? Linux-like format is also used 
> by MacOS X and FUSE, so it will make FUSE code simplier, so I will go
> for that second option. This means I leave src/sys/ufs/ufs/ufs_extattr.c
> as is and just convert the output in src/sys/kern/vfs_xattr.c

The conversion is easy to do, but the right place to do it is tricky. 
VOP_LISTEXTATTR() writes its output to the userland buffer, therefore if
I convert in src/sys/ufs/ufs/ufs_extattr.c, I have to copyin/convert/copyout,
and that does not looks good perfromance-wise. 

Converting in libc is another option, and we can also add a flavor flag to 
VOP_LISTEXTATTR so that we can require the filesystem to output the data
in the appropriate format.

Opinions?

-- 
Emmanuel Dreyfus
manu%netbsd.org@localhost