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Date: Tue, 03 May 2005 10:46:31 -0600
From: Scott Long <scottl@samsco.org>
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To: Craig Rodrigues <rodrigc@crodrigues.org>
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cc: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Aligning extended attributes API with Mac OSX?
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Craig Rodrigues wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> An extended attributes API was just added to Mac OSX 10.4.
> This API looks very similar to FreeBSD's.
> Right now there is no POSIX standard for extended attributes,
> but EA are useful for many different types of things.
> 
> I don't know if EA are widely used in applications on FreeBSD,
> but what do people think about aligning our API with
> Mac OSX?
> 
> Here are the man pages for some of the API's:
> 
> http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man2/listxattr.2.html
> http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man2/setxattr.2.html
> http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man2/removexattr.2.html#//apple_ref/doc/man/2/removexattr
> http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man2/getxattr.2.html#//apple_ref/doc/man/2/getxattr 
> 
> 
> The FreeBSD equivalents are documented in extattr(2).
> 

Evaluating the OSX model and aligning with it is something that is going
to be looked at in the coming months for sure.

Scott