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HFS vs. UFS
Authored by: theegor on Oct 08, '02 08:09:12AM

UFS is compatible with Unix apps. It is case sensitive. This permits me to build a ton of Unix apps, and lets me easily integrate with Linux and nfs environments. Life is much easier when all of my machines offer the same file system semantics.

HFS offers semantics which differ from traditional Unix filesystem semantics. You can't even build the complete Darwin system on HFS, due to incompatibilities with the HFS characteristics.

HFS also has resource forks. I don't want my file system to offer resource forks. It violates the spirit of Unix, where all files are equal, and can be manipulated by all file utilities. Resource forks impose policy, which may not be proper policy. See the paper "End-to-End Arguments in System Design" by Saltzer et al, http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/saltzer84endtoend.html

And then UFS offers soft updates, which prevents disk corruption when the system is improperly halted (similar to a journaled file system).

Since I'm from a Unix background, I can't think of any reason to use HFS.



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HFS vs. UFS
Authored by: nadig on Oct 11, '02 08:08:10PM

Have you considered having two partitions, with two different file systems?
As a matter of fact, and as you state, UNIX works better with flat filesystems like UFS, on the other hand, MacOS and applications developed for MacOS work best with HFS.

It's not about an ideology but rather optimizing for the task. I'm sure you won't use a Ferrari to pull you trailer nor won't you use a Range Rover to race Formula-1 races. Different tasks require different tools.

Hope that helps,
Christoph



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HFS vs. UFS
Authored by: jptd on Oct 13, '02 11:08:17PM

Soft updates are not something that Darwin's implementation supports from what I have read. I saw something earlier on that indicated that they were trying to improve the UFS implementation. But, I could be wrong of course.



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HFS vs. UFS
Authored by: pecosbill on Oct 18, '02 02:03:10PM

A small HFS partition probably wouldn't be a bad idea. Howevver, it probably wouldn't fix the problem:

It's possible that the installer was trying to install stuff to /Lib or ~/Lib and was choking on the lack of resource forks (which is inexcusable as Apple provides a means on UFS).

It's worth a complaint to Adobe.



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