I haven't tried it yet, but at first glance, a lot of work and thought went into this tool: query parser, SQL, VFS layer, fingerprinting, file move detection ("repair"). The code looks pretty readable and well organised too.
Generally speaking, I can't help but feel we're not quite there yet when it comes to meta-data and flexible file system views. We're still coming up with all sorts of cataloguing systems for different types of binary files – I just implemented a Vorbis comment (music tag) parser the other day, and that's just one out of many formats.
Extended attributes (attr(5), "user_xattr") are enabled by default these days on most Linux file systems, but are limited in space and I don't see a lot of tool implementations around the functionality.
Sure there are some general blunt force search indexers, but overall I feel we still live in a Wild West meta-data age as opposed to the myriad of well standardised open data formats.
It would be nice to be able to use a (music, movie, picture, porn, whatever) site's existing meta-data when downloading a file, or hide all work-related files from the file system when you're at home.
Reminder: some programs will reset these xattributes upon the file being edited. Back when I was looking for a tagging program for the Mac I read Photoshop was one of those programs.
I would not trust putting in the effort to tag a bunch of files in a format so out of my control.
What those programs are likely actually doing is not deliberately resetting the attributes, but saving a file by (1) writing to a new file, and (2) moving the new file over the old file (thus destroying anything about the old file that they aren't aware of in the process.)
Not sure if this helps figure out a way around it.
Generally speaking, I can't help but feel we're not quite there yet when it comes to meta-data and flexible file system views. We're still coming up with all sorts of cataloguing systems for different types of binary files – I just implemented a Vorbis comment (music tag) parser the other day, and that's just one out of many formats.
Extended attributes (attr(5), "user_xattr") are enabled by default these days on most Linux file systems, but are limited in space and I don't see a lot of tool implementations around the functionality.
Sure there are some general blunt force search indexers, but overall I feel we still live in a Wild West meta-data age as opposed to the myriad of well standardised open data formats.
It would be nice to be able to use a (music, movie, picture, porn, whatever) site's existing meta-data when downloading a file, or hide all work-related files from the file system when you're at home.