Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

HFS+ is crazy

liminality.xyz

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 211 posts

Re: HFS+ is crazy

#41

Post by KirinDave »

gnu8 wrote: post #3

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.

I mean, there is http://open-zfs.org/wiki/Main_Page and FreeBSD has been proving the implementations reliability for some time now.

Apple could adopt it. They don't. That's probably because the desktop OS is on life support, and there are indications Apple wants to abandon it in favor of a migration to a wholly iOS model.

Re: HFS+ is crazy

#42

Post by mst »

ADSstreamsthrow wrote: post #21
gnu8 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is chiefly used by malware developers at this time.

It's used widely by popular applications (Adobe / Microsoft software products).

Which are, in my experience, more ransomware than malware.

Re: HFS+ is crazy

#43

Post by pjmlp »

idbentley wrote: post #18
kennu wrote: post #2

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.

TLDR: all standard applications for working with files are unaware of resource forks. This is confusing, and hurts new computer users. #consideredharmful

All the applications listed on the blog aren't standard applications from the Mac old days, except for Finder.

Re: HFS+ is crazy

#44

Post by stefantalpalaru »

rogerbinns wrote: post #20

Alternate parts to the main file are present on several platforms, and have the same problems. They are called resource forks on Mac. On Windows/NTFS they are called alternate data streams - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_(file_system) - to use specify a colon and name after the filename (eg example.txt:myads). On Unix, Linux, OS/2 etc you can find extended attributes - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_file…

You wouldn't put the entire content of a file in an extended attribute, would you?

Re: HFS+ is crazy

#45

Post by cstross »

[deleted] wrote: post #33
rogerbinns wrote: post #20

Alternate parts to the main file are present on several platforms, and have the same problems. They are called resource forks on Mac. On Windows/NTFS they are called alternate data streams - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_(file_system) - to use specify a colon and name after the filename (eg example.txt:myads). On Unix, Linux, OS/2 etc you can find extended attributes - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_file…

[deleted]

Actually, resource forks go all the way back to the origins of classic MacOS circa 1984-85! And they were a lot more than just extended attributes -- they were a b-tree storage abstraction full of stuff like icons, chunks of 68K machine code, and anything else that simply didn't belong in a linear data file.

It's a hold-over from MacOS's very non-UNIX origins, and had the makings of an OO filesystem back in the day -- but then the adoption of NeXTStep -- er, sorry, OSX -- obsoleted it overnight. And now it's basically the veriform appendix of OSX, and leads newbies to jump to this rather odd conclusion (that it's somehow "crazy" to do something in a fundmentally non-UNIXy way).

Re: HFS+ is crazy

#46

Post by KirinDave »

coldtea wrote: post #31
idbentley wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TLDR: all standard applications for working with files are unaware of resource forks. This is confusing, and hurts new computer users. #consideredharmful

In 15 years of working with Macs (as a programmer and as a semi-pro DAW/NLE user), I've never been confused once by them. So it sure might be confusing (and I see how) but it's absolutely not very common.

> In 15 years of working with Macs (as a programmer and as a semi-pro DAW/NLE user), I've never been confused once by them.

Gosh, are you saying that the common use of ADS was a common mac pattern and people very familiar with the history of macs would understand this well?

Do you really think that refutes the point that they're confusing to everyone else? While many OSs have implementations of ADS, almost no one uses them.

Re: HFS+ is crazy

#47

Post by zeveb »

Resource forks were pretty cool, actually: they were a simple database attached to every file, which could be used to store metadata or other information. It was pretty common for applications to store fonts, icons &c. all in their resource forks.

Back when I was a kid I used to use ResEdit to change application & file icons, fiddle with GUI controls, change menu structures and so on. Happy days!

Re: HFS+ is crazy

#48

Post by gherkin0 »

Analemma_ wrote: post #14

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…

> HFS+ isn't so much "crazy" as it is "really friggin old".

Exactly. It was also developed for an entirely different non-UNIX operating system. Resource forks were really important and commonly used and understood in Classic Mac OS.

The only crazy thing about the situation is that Apple hasn't made a more typical UNIX filesystem as the default since they retired the Classic environment. What's even crazier is that they used to support one (UFS) but removed that support in Leopard:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_File_System

Re: HFS+ is crazy

#49

Post by CurtHagenlocher »

rogerbinns wrote: post #20

Alternate parts to the main file are present on several platforms, and have the same problems. They are called resource forks on Mac. On Windows/NTFS they are called alternate data streams - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_(file_system) - to use specify a colon and name after the filename (eg example.txt:myads). On Unix, Linux, OS/2 etc you can find extended attributes - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_file…

Arguably, NTFS implemented alternate data streams primarily to support Mac resource forks.
Post reply on HN