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Earlier quoted context omitted.
The utility of such a feature relative to its security, integrity and astonishment costs can be debated, however. ADS in NTFS has long been a subject of pain, for instance, though I'm unaware of its present status.
I think it is chiefly used by malware developers at this time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That would be sweet, indeed. How far along is HAMMER2 these days?
Not far enough for Dragonfly to use it. There's a greater chance of Apple adopting BTRFS (i.e., not a snowball's chance in hell).
G.K. Chesterton on the matter:
In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”
This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable. It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious. There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease.
TLDR: Mac filesystems have resource forks. I guess the author has not used Macs too much, as they have been around since the 1980's.
Resource forks aren't anything new - it's existed since the dawn of macs - if you haven't known about resource forks while working with macs maybe you should learn a bit more about the core of the platform. That said, I agree, it's a horrible design - but it's existed for 20+ years already. For me, this is just like saying "hey people! FAT is horrible, it only allows 8 character + 3 character extension file names!"
Actually there's absolutely nothing horrible about resource forks/extended attributes in theory.
We use way worse ideas like "sidecar" files and metadata stored centrally for the same use cases, which are worse ways to handle the issue.
The real problem is the lack of agreement/interoperability in handling them across FSs (and perhaps tooling).
This is why it was really disappointing that Apple had to abandon ZFS. ZFS is one of the best file systems available and because Oracle owns it it is virtually unusable in most contexts. I wonder if Apple can afford to buy out Oracle at this point, take ZFS and wind up the useless parts.
This is why it was really disappointing that Apple had to abandon ZFS. ZFS is one of the best file systems available and because Oracle owns it it is virtually unusable in most contexts. I wonder if Apple can afford to buy out Oracle at this point, take ZFS and wind up the useless parts.
HFS+ isn't so much "crazy" as it is "really friggin old". It's not much more than a coat of paint on top of HFS, which was introduced in 1985 (!), and thus is missing out on the last three decades of filesystem research. I might be too optimistic, but I've been assuming that Apple started development on a replacement for HFS+ as soon as the ZFS deal collapsed. I know that was years ago, but filsystems take a looooong…
I'm not against research, but I'd rather have Apple fund one of these existing efforts.