Olaf Barthel on the Amiga file system

[Rodney]

With my last interview with Olaf he talked a little bit about the file systems of AmigaOS. He also talked about (i think) his own experiment he was doing in his own time. Im not talking about FFS->PPC im talking about a new file system he was working on. As i remember it was in the early stages (only papper) but hopfuly, if i get around to doing another interivew with him when OS4 is released, i'll talk to him a little about this.

Did the article mention his filesystem project or did he just talk about general Amiga Filesystem issues?

Oops, dotn worry, found out i could read it for myself :}

[Rodney]

When he says New Amiga File Syste - he's mentioning the implementation that OS4 will use right?

Edit: Ill answere my own question here... yes i believe he is talking about the reimplimentation of FSS (known as FFS2)

the following is a part of my interview with olaf barthel that can be found here

Olaf
Talk about busy You'll know that you are too busy if you can't afford a hobby. I'm reading books a hobby, and I'm a certified movie enthusiast.

Right now there's nothing concrete in the pipeline. I've got plans to rework the SMB file system and someday get a stripped-down SMB server running on the Amiga. Then there's the file system issue (designing and implementing the next Amiga file system).

POds
Is the next Amiga File system an OS4 project, or one you happily do in your spare time?

Olaf
This ought to become an OS4 project. But I'm happy to tinker with it until I've got something to show.

POds
How would this differ from FFS2 (which is feature as part of OS4)?

Olaf
A new Amiga file system would have to be more reliable, faster, be able to support larger media and be able to handle the large files today's multimedia applications are expected to deal with. In a nutshell, we'd need a very different file system architecture.

POds
Or are you in fact talking about FFS2?

Olaf
No, the FFS re-implementation is pretty much feature-complete. The overall design has many shortcomings, but you can't really address them without sacrificing backwards compatibility or restarting the testing cycle.

POds
Would you ever suggest Hyperion should implement it, when the time is right? What’s the likely hood of this becoming a part of AmigaOS eventually?

Olaf
Designing and implementing a file system is no small task, and it's no fun if you're going to market and sell it yourself. It ought to become part of the operating system.


POds
So, what parts of the filesystem have you got done? Or if you haven’t got anything done yet, I.e., not started yet... What have you though about implementing..?

Olaf
I'm still in the "let's see what could be useful" stage, trying to put together a list of features and things to avoid. For example, the new file system should use journaling, allow for file names to be longer than 107 characters, permit file names chosen from character sets other than ISO 8859 latin 1 and seek performance should be better. On top of that, it wouldn't hurt if had a plugin system for extending file system functionality (such as for caching and encryption).

Note: im planning on a second interview with olaf. But i want to postpone it till the OS4 release, when olaf should be a little less busy, and he'll prolly have a lot more to talk about .