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TMSU: a tool born out of frustration with the hierarchical nature of filesystems

tmsu.org

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Re: TMSU: a tool born out of frustration with the hierarchical nature of filesystems

#31

Post by auganov »

I just keep all my work-files (documents, downloads etc) in my desktop folder (it's the "top-level" folder in Windows when you Alt-Up, have it symlinked at /desktop/ too).

My default view is a detail view sorted by "date accessed" (descending) which is what I need 99% of the time. Especially handy when uploading random images, quick edits etc from the browser.

btw I highly recommend https://pathcopycopy.codeplex.com/ for those that use a terminal and win explorer at the same time a lot.

Re: TMSU: a tool born out of frustration with the hierarchical nature of filesystems

#32

Post by alpyne »

ori_b wrote: post #22
kpil wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I actually like the hierarchical organisation, and I don't like the 10 year usability trend, particularly driven by Microsofts attempts to patch over their horrid structure with even worse workarounds. The solution to learning my mother were to find her documents is not hiding the place 15 levels deep and having 10 symlinks to it. Fast, unobtrusive indexing and a good structure is all that is needed. Humans…

Tags are a subset of hierarchies + symlinks. If you have a one level hierarchy, you have the equivalent of tags.

I'd argue that tags provide a more graph-like structure, of which a hierarchy (tree)[1] is just a subset. Symlinks provide an "escape-hatch" to hierarchical systems allowing objects to appear to be in more than one directory.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_(graph_theory)

Re: TMSU: a tool born out of frustration with the hierarchical nature of filesystems

#33

Post by dbm5 »

ghshephard wrote: post #20
zepto wrote: post #17

Seems like the Tags feature that has been in MacOS X since 10.9

Was just going to post this - you can also access them from the CLI with mdfind command, mdfind tag:jazz

https://github.com/jdberry/tag

Re: TMSU: a tool born out of frustration with the hierarchical nature of filesystems

#34

Post by seagreen »

kbenson wrote: post #30
seagreen wrote: post #21

A great idea! I think tags are definitely a better way to organize most personal data than trees. Also I like that they describe what data they actually change on your computer right on the homepage: "TMSU does not alter your files in any way: they remain unchanged on disk, or on the network, wherever you put them. TMSU maintains its own database and you simply gain an additional view, which you can mount, based upon…

Hmm, seems like they could have gone the other way, throw everything into a DB, and then wrote a fuse plugin to access it all through traditional file system mechanics. That would have allowed for gating direct access such that moves and renames could be dealt with accordingly. Of course, there are other problems with that approach, but probably not as many as you might think (the file system is a database, so you're…

    they could have gone the other way, throw everything into
    a DB, and then wrote a fuse plugin to access it all
    through traditional file system
This is the Camlistore strategy!

    Of course, there are other problems with that approach
Could you elaborate more on these? I've never worked with FUSE.

Re: TMSU: a tool born out of frustration with the hierarchical nature of filesystems

#35

Post by Skunkleton »

How is this different than something like this:

    mkdir -p ~/tags/{music,big-jazz,mp3}
    ln -s /path/to/summer.mp3 ~/tags/music/
    ln -s /path/to/summer.mp3 ~/tags/big-jazz/
    ln -s /path/to/summer.mp3 ~/tags/mp3/
From there, you can use all normal filesystem tools to interact with your 'tags'. You could extend this with a simple script that handles duplicate file names in the same tag by sticking a hash of the file before the extension. Having a separate database for this information seems unnecessary.

Re: TMSU: a tool born out of frustration with the hierarchical nature of filesystems

#36

Post by seagreen »

leanderleeco wrote: post #27

Hey guys, you should look at diamond.io, we're building something that is a tool to help you solve this problem and the problem of organizing information in general. Check us out!

"It's backed by a powerful Artificial Intelligence."

Ahhhhhhh!

You're tackling a laudable goal, but it would help to link to a page with more technical details.

Re: TMSU: a tool born out of frustration with the hierarchical nature of filesystems

#37

Post by joshstrange »

Skunkleton wrote: post #35

How is this different than something like this: mkdir -p ~/tags/{music,big-jazz,mp3} ln -s /path/to/summer.mp3 ~/tags/music/ ln -s /path/to/summer.mp3 ~/tags/big-jazz/ ln -s /path/to/summer.mp3 ~/tags/mp3/ From there, you can use all normal filesystem tools to interact with your 'tags'. You could extend this with a simple script that handles duplicate file names in the same tag by sticking a hash of the file before t…

* 4 commands vs 1

* Doesn't account for files with the same name

* No helper methods like merge when you typo

Just a couple of reasons off the top of my head

Re: TMSU: a tool born out of frustration with the hierarchical nature of filesystems

#38

Post by stormbrew »

vlunkr wrote: post #28
kpil wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I actually like the hierarchical organisation, and I don't like the 10 year usability trend, particularly driven by Microsofts attempts to patch over their horrid structure with even worse workarounds. The solution to learning my mother were to find her documents is not hiding the place 15 levels deep and having 10 symlinks to it. Fast, unobtrusive indexing and a good structure is all that is needed. Humans…

You have to realize though that this software doesn't take away your heiracichal system, it just gives you another way to look at it. Recently I've been cleaning up my music library and I'm seeing some of the shortcomings of the current system. What do you do with a compilation album? Have a folder for each artist or put them all together, (Which would separate them from others works by the same artist)? iTunes or wh…

That iTunes view is still a hierarchy, though. More accurately, it's still a DAG. The hierarchy is not the problem here, it's the rigidity of trying to put something in only one part of that hierarchy.

Re: TMSU: a tool born out of frustration with the hierarchical nature of filesystems

#39

Post by Mister_Snuggles »

Stuff like this is cool, but it really points out just how poor the filesystem is for organizing certain types of data. The "Why does TMSU not detect file moves and renames?" question in the FAQ really highlights how this isn't helped along by the filesystem at all.

One comment mentioned BFS, which had some really cool stuff. There's an Ars Technica article that touches on some of it[0].

The secret to BFS, in my mind, is that applications use it. The Haiku Mail app, as noted in the article, used the filesystem as its email database by attaching its own attributes to messages. This is also an example used in the "Practical Filesystem Design with the Be Filesystem" book[1].

Unless the metadata becomes a first class citizen in the filesystem, any attempts to layer it on top will have problems. Either applications won't understand it or normal filesystem operations will cause the metadata database to become de-synced with the filesystem data.

[0] http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2010/06/the-be...

[1] http://www.letterp.com/~dbg/practical-file-system-design.pdf...

Re: TMSU: a tool born out of frustration with the hierarchical nature of filesystems

#40

Post by Udik »

Skunkleton wrote: post #35

How is this different than something like this: mkdir -p ~/tags/{music,big-jazz,mp3} ln -s /path/to/summer.mp3 ~/tags/music/ ln -s /path/to/summer.mp3 ~/tags/big-jazz/ ln -s /path/to/summer.mp3 ~/tags/mp3/ From there, you can use all normal filesystem tools to interact with your 'tags'. You could extend this with a simple script that handles duplicate file names in the same tag by sticking a hash of the file before t…

It's still hierarchical. Try to tag a file both as jazz and as party music with folders. You can't.

Edit: Misread. Yes it would work. Well, consider this a tool for doing it automatically, without filling your hd with bogus folders and links

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