Re: overlaying

[Bjarke Hammersholt Roune <asmild@post6.tele.dk>]

> Pierre Phaneuf wrote:
> >I was wondering if PFile was going to provide a particular feature,
> >which is "overlaying" something over another. What I'd like would be to
> >mount a Pak file at some directory and when I try to access something
> >there, that it checks the Pak file, then the directory for the file...
> 
> By default it's the other way round. If you don't specify a fstype in the
> URL passed to PFile it first looks in the "normal" file system (via stdio)
> and if that fails it looks through the virtual stuff (PakFiles etc).
> 
I think we should check the virtual fs first. The reason for this is
that A) its faster to look in in a pak for a file than in the native fs
(or we've done something wrong) and B) you can quite easily change the
virtual fs by mounting/unmounting archives, but its quite another thing
to change the stuff in the native fs (again, its less effecient and you
have to actually delete stuff to remove it (not all fs'es support
links)).

Of course, this isn't that important, since we'll be making this
configuable, but I think the default should be to look in the virtual fs
first.

> >Maybe even mounting multiple Pak files one over the other ("patch" Pak
> >files, overriding the content of the previous one).
> 
> Planned for later. Shouldn't be difficult to add however.
> 
Hmm... That depends a little on the implementation. Did we ever find a
solution we both liked? (can't remember)