[Info-vax] MOUNT and filesystems, was: Re: RMS record metadata, was: Re: Re; Spiralog, RMS Journaling (was

[Simon Clubley]

On 2016-06-27, David Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
> Simon Clubley wrote:
>> 
>> It would be a lot better if you could load and remove filesystems at
>> kernel level instead (in the same way that you can currently load a
>> device driver at runtime [but not remove it :-(]) and have the ODS-2/5
>> support just be yet another filesystem driver.
>> 
>> And yes, I know in reality that's going to be NuVMS territory only.
>> 
>
> Not so fast ....
>
> If VSI is developing a new file system, and the road map says they are, they are 
> also going to run into this problem.  So they will:
>
> 1) Add another file system where required
>

It will probably be a monolithic mass of code added on top of the
existing monolithic mass of code but it would be _very_ nice to be
proved wrong here.

> 2) Do the design and work to allow what you're asking

Or MOUNT will just get yet more special case and filesystem specific
code on top of the current special case and filesystem specific code.

There are a number of things that VMS, even today, is very good at when
compared to the opposition. Handling filesystems in a general way is
not one of them however.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world