Re: Adding linux_link(2) system call, second round

[christos%astron.com@localhost (Christos Zoulas)]

In article <20110731224944.GA23900%britannica.bec.de@localhost>,
Joerg Sonnenberger  <joerg%britannica.bec.de@localhost> wrote:
>On Sun, Jul 31, 2011 at 07:49:20PM +0200, Emmanuel Dreyfus wrote:
>> Both behaviors are standard compliant, since SUSv2 says nothing about
>> resolving symlinks or not. I found at least one program (glusterfs),
>> which assumes the Linux behavior, and is a real pain to fix on NetBSD
>> because of that.
>
>The standard is explicitly open on this to allow filesystems that
>implement symlinks without using inodes. Essentially, it is valid to
>store a symlink inside the directory entry itself. That's one of the
>reasons why no change semantic is provided either.

And approximately this (storing the symlink data inside the source
inode without using an extra inode of the link target fit) was
attempted in BSD4.4 and if failed miserably. We had to undo it, and
use separate inodes again.

christos