> Stephen Pair wrote:
> > Has anyone ever implemented NFS for Smalltalk?  The reason I ask is 
> > that now that I'm starting to store files in a BerkeleyDB database, 
> > I'd like to retain the convenience of having shell access to those 
> > files. Implementing an NFS server for Squeak seems like the natural 
> > way of doing that.  Plus it would be really neat!
> 
> When you say that you're storing files in the BDB, do you 
> mean like general, non-squeak data that used to be in flat 
> files, but now live in the database?

Yes.  They're just LargeByteArrays with some meta data attached.

> I'm not sure why NFS would be the best way to get to data in 
> a BDB?  NSF is pretty ugly and insecure, and not even too 
> terribly popular for the general netizen.  

Perhaps there is a better protocol?  I want to be able to mount the
files into my file system.  That would allow me to have all of the
conveniences of moving files around using a normal shell and all of the
various file manipulation programs (not to mention being able to load
and run executable files directly from the command line).

> Perhaps a WebDAV 
> server (or something close enough, but home brewed) or even 
> an FTP server in Squeak plus a nice file browser on the 
> client end like RBrowser?

I really want to mount these files into the file system...I don't care
about drag n drop copying and stuff...I can do that easily enough from
Squeak.  What I would like to do is open a VI editor on an HTML template
that's stored in Squeak/BDB.  Having to copy the file back and forth
would just be a pain...

Looking around the Net I see: http://ftpfs.sourceforge.net/  ...perhaps
using something like that I could get by with a Squeak FTP server and
FTPFS.  Don't know how well it works though.

> But in general to me, the idea of exposing not only your BDBs 
> as a filesystem look a like, but Squeak objects in general 
> seems interesting... we could have something like the Medusa 
> FTP server (is that what it's
> called?) like used in Zope.  From your client end it looks 
> like you're ftping to a computer's file system, but you're 
> really FTPing into an OODB.

Sure, there are lot's of possibilities there, but that's not exactly
what I'm after.  Better to have a telnet or ssh server in Squeak and
invent a command line language for squeak I think...similar to topaz for
GemStone.  But heck...with a broadband connection I'm able to get a VNC
session up and run Squeak just fine over it (unless of course Squeak
running on Windows...in which case it's just awful).  Having that
ability makes a CLI just about useless.
 
> Regards,
> Aaron

- Stephen