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Comment by humanrebar | Hacker News Reader

The article and everyone in this discussion is talking about photo tagging and such.

What I want to know is how configuration management, source code organization, build systems, packaging systems, and other experts tools will work without a hierarchical filesystem.

If you're designing a camera application, sure, maybe you don't need a hierarchical filesystem if you have other means of organization and discovery. But who's going to be able to code that camera app in the first place? And when "it" is installed, what exactly happens?

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These systems were designed for a hierarchical filesystem so it is natural that that is what they support. I'm sure that if tag-based filesystems were the default they would have an equally suitable design that worked well there. This could be as simple as specifying the "project" as a set of tags. For example project=camera and maybe compile a submodule with project=camera,module=ui. Then the files inside could be processed by the build tool.

Of course for any tag-based filesystem to take over it will probably need a compatibility mode. I can imagine something simple as a path=myproj/src/main.rs.

My point wasn't that it would be impossible to create a new kind of solution. It's enough that it would be a massive undertaking for unclear benefit, if any.

If we get rid of hierarchical filesystems, what replaces got, for instance? Perforce has some ability to project different filesystem hierarchies, but even if that were enough (it probably isn't), porting all those tools and projects to perforce would be an incredible amount of work without a clear upside for users of version control systems.

This is the piece I've been struggling to get at. I understand why filesystems exist and how they help with interacting with the physical structures that underlie computers, but I don't understand what benefit a database alternative to directories can offer (and if you tell me a directory is just a specialized database please be prepared to explain using very clear language).

Maybe there is one, but even when I talk to experienced devs with engineering (not just software) backgrounds, I haven't gotten a good explanation. Perhaps because there isn't one?

But I've been curious about this for weeks.

'Replacing file systems with something better' does not mean you have to throw out the hierarchical folder structure that people are used to. Didgets does use folders to organize files if that is what the users want (when importing files, this is the default).

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