[Boost-users] Filesystem library questions

From: Manish Motwani (mmotwani_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-02-26 01:37:00

Hi,

We're creating a new cross-platform dispersed storage technology. 
Backing up a file from one platform and restoring to another (or the 
same) is a requirement. We have found boost to be very useful for 
threads, date/time, program options, etc. We're also currently using the 
boost filesystem libarary, but we can't figure out why many of the 
file-metadata query and modifier functions are missing.

Can someone from boost let us know if there's any way of querying 
complete file-metadata (including read/write/execute permissions on 
windows and linux, ACLs, creation-time in windows, etc.).

I found only the following function in version 1.32 (the one we're using):

last_write_time         (read and write modification time).
symbolic_link_exists    (check if a file is a sym link).

And these new functions have been added since:

create_hard_link
create_symlink
.. and some functionality to get the type of file is also there in the trunk version.

But what about the rest of metadata filesystems (POSIX, NTFS, FAT32, 
HFS, etc) provide? Is this ever going to be included in the library? Is 
there a way to access this information any other way?

I suspect these questions may have been asked by others, so can someone 
point me to where I can find code to complement the boost filesystem 
library to handle file-metadata?

Thanks,

Manish