Koios is a file tagging system that uses extended attributes

submitted by LarrySwinger2 from (gitlab.com)

all 10 comments
sorted by:
top
newinsightfulfun

[–]LarrySwinger2[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

/u/TheRealPanzer do you mind me mentioning you now and then? I find links that I'm sure will interest you. The advantage of Koios's approach is that it doesn't need to track moves / file renames, because xattrs are embedded in the file.

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

I do not mind at all ...

[–]LarrySwinger2[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Cool. Here are some other recent posts by me that are up your alley:

What do you think of Koios? Can it be relied on long-term?

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

"Unfortunately, because of the nature of varying extended attributes support across many different file-systems, it is difficult to ensure that copying from one file-system to another will preserve the extended attributes."

[–]LarrySwinger2[S] 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

It'll be difficult to preserve tags if you make drastic changes to your system regardless. Let me explain my conundrum more elaborately: this is an essential feature that I'm missing in GNU/Linux, and I'm seriously considering switching back to macOS so that I have this out of the box. If I stick to a single filesystem, Koios's tags seem just as stable as macOS; I only lose my tags if I switch between GNU/Linux and macOS. Well, I'll admit that I don't like the filesystem lock-in.

Do you perhaps know of another tagging system under GNU/Linux that allows you to freely move and rename files, and that's reliable for maintaining your data in the long term?

I'm also considering solving the problem with symbolic and/or hardlinks, by putting everything inside ~/tags/[tag]/, and creating multiple links to the same file / directory whenever it has multiple tags. Any thoughts on that?

(By the way, you seemed a bit distant in the past, not willing to tell us where you get your awesome links, for example. Well, I'm glad you're open to discussing things.)

[–]LarrySwinger2[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Hey. Since tar can preserve xattributes, I was thinking perhaps you can put all your files in a tar archive and unpack it in another filesystem if you transition. Do you think this would work?

Also, care to comment on my comment above?

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I don't know why it shouldn't work.

[–]Countach_3D 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

cf. tagsistant, tmsu, Supertag, TagSpaces, GoboLinux

[–]LarrySwinger2[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yes, thanks. A lot of these have a hidden requirement that you don't move the files, that is why I stopped looking at them.

[–]LarrySwinger2[S] 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

I've taken a look at Globohomo Linux. It sure looks interesting, but is it related?