Re: [AD] Splitting filesystem APIs

[Thomas Fjellstrom <tfjellstrom@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat April 18 2009, Elias Pschernig wrote:
> Thomas Fjellstrom wrote:
> > It is becoming clear that I have less than no say in what happens to the
> > lib though. (I suppose thats fine, I've really only contributed this
> > code, the old alsa 0.9/1.x driver, and a small fix for xinerama support
> > in a5). It has made me think about evaluating how I spend my time. I'm
> > not sure this has been entirely worth it.
>
> There really was nothing to gain from it all along - it's just an open
> source project, and a very low profile one at that. If it's not fun for you
> working on it just for, well, fun, you really shouldn't.
>
> In any case, it's unfair to say that things are now changed without a good
> reason. If you look at the posts here from the last few days, you'll find
> that quite a few issues with the fs code in current SVN were mentioned:
>
> - Search paths (some find them not easy to work with)
> - Current directory (I don't quite understand the issue myself, but
> still..) - ALLEGRO_FS_HANDLE can be a file or directory (some don't like
> that) - ALLEGRO_FS_HANDLE can be an opened or not opened file which is
> confusing - thread-safety (is a MUST and not up to discussion as far as I'm
> concerned) - how do you open files within a zip archive (and code physfs
> addon to test..) - how to use non-stdio filesystems in general
>
> So, if we want to get A5 out this year, these issues all need to be fixed.
> And I expect Peter's upcoming commit to fix most of them (except the
> directory handling which he said he would leave to someone else).
>
> He also already said that it won't be a big change from how things
> currently work - the biggest change likely is the ALLEGRO_FILE type - which
> should be an obvious change if you look at the list above. (I wouldn't
> totally rule out that we keep ALLEGRO_FS_HANDLE after all, especially if
> someone can come up with an example where it is much easier to work it -
> but right now I'm also seeing more arguments against than for it.)

Its been so long since I did all the original research, planning and work that 
I myself don't really remember all the reasons. I really do wish people had 
spoken up a heck of a lot sooner. I'd be a lot LOT less frustrated right now.

-- 
Thomas Fjellstrom
tfjellstrom@xxxxxxxxxx