MetaFS 0.1.5 review

MetaFS is a daemon for Linux (and Linux only) that allows you to access information about your files (such as MP3 tags or JPEG's EXIF

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 0K Developer: CondorDes

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MetaFS is a daemon for Linux (and Linux only) that allows you to access information about your files (such as MP3 tags or JPEG's EXIF tags) easily and consistently using extended attributes.

MetaFS project also allows you to perform fast searches using this information. MetaFS is extensible, so anyone can write plugins to access new types of metadata.

MetaFS uses the FUSE library to act as a layer between user programs and the filesystem, which allows indexes to be kept up-to-date in realtime, and eliminates the need for a specialized metadata API.

It provides custom extended attributes (including ACLs) for those filesystems that don't have them, and it provides a plugin infrastructure which can be extended to provide searching and expose file-format-specific metadata (e.g. ID3 or EXIF tags) as extended attributes.

Plugins which are planned include:

provide stat() data as extended attributes [implemented]
allow users to set their own EAs and ACLs [implemented]
automatic MIME type detection (which is set in an EA) based on the file's contents and extension [implemented]
extract metadata from MP3 and Ogg files as EAs
indexing interface to store metadata
search interface to quickly locate files using this metadata (I am considering whether or not it is feasible to allow users create Evolution-like vFolders for their searches. I am also considering the security implications of searching; users should not see search results for other users' private data.)

Requirements:
Linux (*BSD, Darwin, etc will not be supported)
FUSE version 2.1.x or later
BerkeleyDB version 4.2.x
POSIX threads
libmagic, from the "file" package (for the MIME type plugin)

What's New in This Release:
This release has two major new features: services and root plugins.
Services are alternate ways of looking at a file or directory.
For example, viewing a tarball as though it were a directory.
Root plugins allow MetaFS to get its filesystem data from whatever source you choose.
You are no longer limited to using a standard directory tree somewhere in your filesystem.
There are also many bugfixes and API changes.