On Storage Engines

smalldatum.blogspot.com

32 pointsgrzm2 comments

Storage engine APIs, filesystem APIs, etc. are all closely coupled places unless they've been designed with disregard to performance.

Plan 9 had a beautiful and simple API for a network filesystem but real filesystem APIs (like FUSE) are complicated as hell because memory allocation matters.

Similar things turn up with storage engines. If performance, reliability and other "non-functional requirements" aren't addressed you can make something simple, but ignoring those things makes your system likely to be "non-functional" in the end.

How is 9P not a "real" filesystem API? Asking for a friend.

Fuse and, indeed 9P2000.u are both indeed complicated as hell, but appear to require it as their underlying FS is posix^Wlinux-based and thus a higgledy-piggledy API nightmare.

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