Re: [stellation-res] UNITTESTS DROP: support for nested directories

["Mark C. Chu-Carroll" <mcc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Saturday 03 August 2002 03:54 pm, Florin Iucha wrote:
> New features: nested directories.
>
> Question: why is stellation using unix commands for file manipulation
> instead of java native io API? Is it faster this way?

The Unix commands are all in the workspace code, which is written
and maintained by Dave Shields. So Dave can give the conclusive
answer. (To be honest, I don't know nearly as much about the
command line parts of the system as I'd like; my attention has
been focused on the repository core and server. )

From what Dave has told me, I think the Unix commands are used for handling 
things that you can't do with the Java IO api. For example, modifying the 
filesystem permissions for a file can't be done with the Java IO API.  Nor 
can the executable bit bit manipulated. Nor can symbolic links be created.
And even ignoring those things, when faced with a java.io.File which
is the name for a symbolic link, the Java IO stuff doesn't handle
it particularly well for something like Stellation that needs to be able
to distinguish the link from its target.

All of the Unix commands are supposed to be in isolated code,
where there's a non-Unix alternative. (If it's not, then it's a bug,
and should be fixed.)

	-Mark

-- 
Mark Craig Chu-Carroll,  IBM T.J. Watson Research Center  
*** The Stellation project: Advanced SCM for Collaboration
***		http://www.eclipse.org/stellation
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