Comment by dfee | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dfee | Hacker News Reader

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Or alternatively, I'd like to see variations like: "Git repo as a database"; i.e. sqlite backed git.

There are a whole class of problems here that I have little or no experience with, but seemingly could be incredibly impactful. For instance, further research and investment into versioning, event-logging, etc. could bring about a very rich revolution in OS / user experience.

"What if... data (e.g. file) manipulations where semantic – rather than CRUD, you had application-layer higher level blocks that presented different abstractions to data below."

Or, as I have more experience with SQL than FS, I could just be looking at the world through the lens of having a hammer and seeing everything as a nail.

Not exactly “SQLite-backed Git” but have you looked at Fossil? https://www.fossil-scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/index.wiki

> SQLite backed git

SQLite development is actually version controlled by an open source SQLite backed version control system called fossil.

Everything is a nail.

Whenever developer sorts get all starry eyed over "DB as an FS", they never consider data exchange between applications vendors and platforms. Their applications always exist alone in a digital vacuum.

Example: Imagine trying to attach an MS Word document stored in this DBFS to an email from a Thunderbird client. What does that look like to the user? What does it look like to the Thunderbird developer?

Abstract and encapsulate so that each application can use their own container format that includes schema and encoding details? Other applications can read this metadata directly from each containerized db object? Cool, we just reinvented the filesystem again.

You're right, any viable replacement for a filesystem must be compatible with existing filesystem APIs. That doesn't mean you can't implement the storage layer differently, or add additional APIs.

Look at ZFS. It's a filesystem, but internally looks like a database. If you try to define the terms "database" and "filesystem" generally, you'll realize how difficult it is to separate the concepts.

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