HFS+ is crazy • Hacker News Board

Re: HFS+ is crazy

#91

Post by azinman2 » Fri, Dec 04, 2015, 7:10 PM UTC

zeveb wrote: post #47

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!

Me too. ResEdit was magic to a 10 year old (myself).

The author clearly has no idea what he's talking about, except pointing out long known issues in transferring files with resource forks to other operating systems.

Re: HFS+ is crazy

#92

Post by duskwuff » Fri, Dec 04, 2015, 7:11 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #32

Skunkleton wrote: post #26

Wouldn't it be cool if Apple just picked up a standard file system from somewhere else? Ext4 for example.

They would still keep something like resource forks. Most modern filesystems have them. Here's the man page for Ext4 and co on them: http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/precise/man5/attr.5.html

Heck - at this point, resource forks are exposed as a "com.apple.ResourceFork" xattr with a large binary value. The primary remaining visible quirk is that they're also accessible via a magic path ("file/..namedFork/rsrc") -- the fact that the file system has a special way of storing them is irrelevent to userspace.

Re: HFS+ is crazy

#93

Post by michaelhoffman » Fri, Dec 04, 2015, 7:12 PM UTC

DHJSH wrote: post #65

rogerbinns wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. It was originally done as part of OS/2 (Windows NT was sort of OS/3 - the next version of OS/2) and OS/2 had "extended attributes" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_file_attributes#OS.2F... - so NT also needed them for compatibility.

Thank you! All these Mac people think Apple Invented Everything.

The resource forks of the Macintosh File System date back to 1984, significantly antedating OS/2.

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

Re: HFS+ is crazy

#94

Post by Profan » Fri, Dec 04, 2015, 7:12 PM UTC

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #85

Profan wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't know what they don't know. Talking down to people who think something is strange for being the way it is, instead of explaining to them why it is, is so counterproductive and serves no purpose. Everyone has things they don't know, just provide an explanation instead of an arrogant comment. He even says "I'm sure there's an Apple-y reason for the existence of this feature, but I can't imagine what it migh…

Searching for meaning rather than judging something over face value is a sign of an educated person. You would expect more of those types on HN, but instead there's seemingly a crowd of predominantly hyperopinionated tinkerer-types.

One should be careful to not box people in too much, of course HN is full of tinkerer-types though (i mean, it's in the name), but I don't see that as the opposite of someone who is possible of searching for meaning, that's just absurd.

Judge people less, it doesn't do you any good, and it doesn't breed better discussion.

You're doing the exact same judging by going "I'm tired of having discussions on HN for this exact same reason..".

Just do your best to contribute and don't fuel the flames when things start going downhill, it's (imo) the best way breed an overall better environment.

Re: HFS+ is crazy

#95

Post by deftnerd » Fri, Dec 04, 2015, 7:13 PM UTC

bydo wrote: post #76

oblio wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you're not right. There are so many wonderful filesystems already out there, many of them already Open Source. I'm not against research, but I'd rather have Apple fund one of these existing efforts.

Which? Apple won't adopt anything GPL, so BTRFS, XFS, JFS, etc--basically every Linux project is right out. It was almost ZFS, years ago, but Apple backed out when Oracle bought Sun. What out there is modern, good, and under a compatible license? HAMMER?

They could probably buy up the rights to BeFS for really cheap now. It was a beautiful file system, in my opinion.

Re: HFS+ is crazy

#96

Post by ScottBurson » Fri, Dec 04, 2015, 7:15 PM UTC

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 think ZFS would still need some work to be a good consumer filesystem. Most notably, they would have to remove the restriction that you can't expand a pool by adding devices -- the way you have to do it now (swap in a larger device for one existing device, resilver, and repeat) is just a non-starter.

Re: HFS+ is crazy

#97

Post by jbverschoor » Fri, Dec 04, 2015, 7:16 PM UTC

OH I miss the BFS

Re: HFS+ is crazy

#98

Post by 4ad » Fri, Dec 04, 2015, 7:17 PM UTC

kevbin wrote: post #89

CurtHagenlocher wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably, NTFS implemented alternate data streams primarily to support Mac resource forks.

Dave Cutler's team writing NT came from VMS which has multi-version files which are pretty much the same as multi-fork files.

Not the same thing at all. On VMS, when you opened a file, made changes and saved them, you automatically got a new version. You could open any version using the colon syntax, but it's not the same thing at all as resource forks.

Re: HFS+ is crazy

#99

Post by mwfunk » Fri, Dec 04, 2015, 7:17 PM UTC

This would have been a lot more compelling if it basically wasn't just somebody stating the existence of resource forks and acting like that's a surprise. If someone knows just one thing about HFS+, it's that it's kludgey wrapper around the ancient Mac OS filesystem which added POSIX behaviors and other more modern niceties that no one at Apple was thinking about in the '80s. If someone knows just two things about HFS+, the second thing is the existence of resource forks.

There are wide, deep, rich, fertile fields of HFS+ criticism to be had- low hanging fruit just dripping with potential for hundreds if not thousands of snarky blog entries about problems with HFS+ for people to post to HN. This is not one of them. The filesystem situation on OS X has such a long, tortured, and widely documented history of technical and human failure that even the Cleveland Browns should feel sorry for it.

There is at least one extremely old, legacy font file format supported by OS X in which the entire font is in the resource fork. Other than that, resource forks themselves have been deprecated for the entire existence of OS X. This is like stumbling across some ancient vestige of DOS compatibility in Windows and treating that discovery like a smoking gun gotcha moment that you're certain is going to blow everyone's minds.

Re: HFS+ is crazy

#100

Post by saidajigumi » Fri, Dec 04, 2015, 7:18 PM UTC

Profan wrote: post #78

thought_alarm wrote: post #58

It's amazing how garbage like this always rockets to the top of HN. This guy doesn't know anything about file systems or about the operating system he's using. But he sounds confident, so that's evidently good enough for a lot of people. If you think it's crazy that a file system supports multiple data forks/steams, then you don't know very much about file systems. If you think it's crazy that an operating system mai…

People don't know what they don't know. Talking down to people who think something is strange for being the way it is, instead of explaining to them why it is, is so counterproductive and serves no purpose. Everyone has things they don't know, just provide an explanation instead of an arrogant comment. He even says "I'm sure there's an Apple-y reason for the existence of this feature, but I can't imagine what it migh…

This isn't about what the author does/doesn't know. The author managed to figure out that this was about resource forks, meaning that clearly they'd done some footwork and had found the right thread of information to follow.

But GP's point gets to how the author handled that new knowledge: post an essay of cranky, self-assured tone to their website instead of following that thread to understand how and why OS X resource forks came to be. I.e. they followed the path of "anything I don't already know must be wrong":

I'm sure there's an Apple-y reason for the existence of this feature, but I can't imagine what it might be.

It's hard not to bash this kind of rhetorical mess. "I took the time to research everything up to here, then EPIC FLOUNCE!"

If you're going to write an article critical of HFS+, perhaps making an argument for a successor, great! It's a topic I'll get wholeheartedly behind. But this article is just lazy bitching on the internet, which certainly doesn't deserve to be voted up.