> what I really want is a simple, well-specified app protocol for filesystem operations.
Genuine question, what’s wrong with existing Operating System FS + FUSE with any remote protocol? Eg there exists S3fuse if you want object/bucket storage, sshfs for using ssh to a host, and the fuse api is easy enough to port to custom backends (in memory, db, etc).
Don’t want to be the guy saying “who needs Dropbox we have sftp” but you’re asking for a technical spec and protocol… and one exists? I haven’t worked too much in this space so I don’t know what tasks are hard to do, but it seems like leaning on existing file system tools/api at the app level makes sense? What’s missing, does “over the network” need to be a primary consideration for these uses?
The page I linked lists quite a uses cases that would become possible/easier with a new protocol.
To your specific concerns, object storage systems like S3 don't support partial writes to files, which makes FUSE mounts a leaky abstraction. SSHFS is much better, but obviously can't be used in web apps.
I'm not saying we need to replace existing protocols, but we need one that can work in a more diverse set of use cases.
Genuine question, what’s wrong with existing Operating System FS + FUSE with any remote protocol? Eg there exists S3fuse if you want object/bucket storage, sshfs for using ssh to a host, and the fuse api is easy enough to port to custom backends (in memory, db, etc).
Don’t want to be the guy saying “who needs Dropbox we have sftp” but you’re asking for a technical spec and protocol… and one exists? I haven’t worked too much in this space so I don’t know what tasks are hard to do, but it seems like leaning on existing file system tools/api at the app level makes sense? What’s missing, does “over the network” need to be a primary consideration for these uses?