Subject: Re: Yet another base64 patch

From: "David A. Wheeler" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 02:38:10 -0400

Paul Jackson wrote:
> David wrote:
> 
>>It's a trade-off, I know.
> 
> 
> So where do you recommend we make that trade-off?

I'd look at some of the more constraining, yet still
common cases, and make sure it worked reasonably
well without requiring magic. My list would be:
ext2, ext3, NFS, and Windows' NTFS (stupid short filenames,
case-insensitive/case-preserving).  Samba shouldn't be
more constraining than NTFS, and I would expect ReiserFS
wouldn't be a constraining case.  Bonus points if the
names lengths are inside POSIX guarantees, but I bet the
POSIX limits are so tiny as to be laughable.  Bonus points for
CD-ROM format with the Rock Ridge extensions (I _think_ DVDs
and later use that format too, yes?), though if that
didn't work tar files are an easy workaround. Imagine a full
Linux kernel source repository, for 30+ (pick a number) years..
can the filesystems handle the number of objects in those cases?
If it works, your infrastructure should be sufficiently
portable to "just work" on others too.

Anyway, my two cents.

--- David A. Wheeler