saga-rg

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saga-rg@lists.ogf.org

May 2009

6 participants
2 discussions

missing(?) method reporting last modification time
by Thilo Kielmann 29 Sep '09

29 Sep '09

Folks, within our group we are currently delving into issues with accessing remote file systems. What strikes us is that such access is SLOW. As such, it would be very beneficial if one could find out when (and thus whether) a remote file or directory has been modified. While returning this piece of information sounds to be "trivial", it strikes us that the SAGA spec has no such call in the name space package (where files reside). In POSIX terms, this is the info returned by the stat system call (see: man 2 stat), with the st_mtime parameter. In Java, files have a method lastmodified(). Both POSIX and Java report the time in milliseconds since 01/01/1970 (epoch). Of course, it looks like nobody has ever been thinking about such a use case, but here we are! Our feeling is that the last modification time is very essential meta data about files, so such a call should certainly be there. With our current problem certainly not being the only use case for finding out how old/new a given file or directory is... Our favourite proposal is to add a method that returns the last modification time to both ns_entry and ns_directory as this makes sense with physical as well as with logical (replicated) files. Any reactions/objections ??? Thilo Kielmann -- Thilo Kielmann http://www.cs.vu.nl/~kielmann/

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saga core errata
by Andre Merzky 12 May '09

12 May '09

Hi folx, I have no doubt that there is a fundamental reason why the German language has such a large number of proverbs which literally inspire procrastination ("Gut Ding braucht Weile", "Was lange waehrt wird gut", "Rom wurde auch nicht an einem Tag gebaut", usw. In anyway, that is what you have to blame for the long delay of the errata release of the SAGA core spec: my German genes... ;-) So, attached is the pdf which has all errata known to date incorporated, and marked. Also attached is a version which has the markup removed, a changelog, and the original ERRATA file from CVS, which documents the errata we received. Please comment! But as the errata have already been discussed during the last two OGF meetings, I would also like to declare this as a final call on the SAGA mailing list: unless there are significant comments, I'll submit the doc to the OGF editor after one week. BTW: thanks to Mathijs, Paul, Hartmut, Steve, Ole, Joao, Thilo, Ceriel, and PFA for reporting spec errors (hope I did not forget anybody...). Many thanks for your patience, best wishes, Andre. PS.: We have two SAGA sessions scheduled for OGF-26. -- Nothing is ever easy.

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