Dantalian

I thought I would post an update since it’s been a while since I’ve done so.

I’m currently working on version 1.0. It’s not quite done yet, but there are some important changes I would like to point out beforehand. A dev branch is available to look at or play with.

• Directory tagging has been changed. The old way involved placing directories in a Dantalian-specific location, and then hard linking symlinks as per regular file tagging. This is bad as symlinks are fragile to path changes¹, but more importantly, hard linking symlinks is not portable. POSIX does not require it as far as I can tell; the fact that this is possible in ext4, the only one I’ve tried, is just an implementation detail than a feature, I would think. The old way also involved ugly hacks for fixing symlinks when paths were changed.

  The new way still uses symlinks, but implicitly assumes that symlinks to the same directory are tags for that directory. Also, tag information is stored in a special file in each directory so that each directory’s symlinks can be regenerated, in case paths are changed or other file system restructuring happens.

  Migration: If you don’t have a lot of tagged directories, you can use the new revert command in version 0.6 after untagging the directories using the old version, then retag them using the new version. If you have a lot of tagged drectories, you can write a script to dump the tags, and then import them in the new version.

• A handful of new commands for the new directory tagging method.

• New import/export commands. These aren’t intended for backup, but for programmatically exporting/importing tags to/from other applications.

• Removal of FUSE features. After I’ve played with it a bit, I want to redesign it from scratch. I also need to redesign it for the new directory tagging method. These will be re-added sometime later in the 1.x branch.

• The API has been completely broken, thanks to heavy refactoring. Check the current branch to see what it looks like.

This release marks Dantalian’s transition to stable development, for the 1.x branch. Mainly, this means that I will stop breaking APIs and such so that everyone (myself included) can use Dantalian without having to worry about stuff breaking. Thus, the 1.x branch will be devoted solely to bug fixes and new minor features, with no design or API changes.