Dept. of Computer and Information science, Linköping University
We are interested in creating a NFS (Network File System) based interface or rather a NFS server making the contents of a LINCKS database available as files and directories. The NFS server would be serving read-only files which are built from parts in a LINCKS database and thus constructing a kind of virtual file system. Of course, a third dimension should be added to allow users to traverse the edit and development history of the displayed objects. Thus, the normal tools such as compiler, linkers, editor could access the contents of a LINCKS database as files without any need for rebuilding or relinking with a LINCKS specific library.
The NFS server would be a normal NFS server, but probably initially restricted to exporting the files as read-only to keep it design simple, leaving the write back until a later phase.
The starting point would probably be one of the available implementations of NFS servers found on the Internet (we know of at least three different implementation in 'C'). The NFS server will be sharing the library developped in FrameMaker Project and be using the HTML generating module from the WWW Project. A few new views (or GPD in LINCKS parlance) will must be defined for "directories" and files. Also, it might necessary to construct some kind of caching mechanism to speed up the access.
Our development environment is C, Sun, running SunOS 4.1.3, using the X11 window system, but LINCKS is available on most Unix platforms (including linux).
See the related projects FrameMaker, Emacs and WWW Gateway, which all share a common ground.
For more information and discussion, please contact Martin Sjölin, E++ Bv 129, phone: 013/28 24 10 or mail to marsj@ida.liu.se