FileSystem that uses tags rather than folders?

Question

Hello stackoverflow community,

I have a problem. My files are a mess, I try to structure them into folders with names that describe what they are in a recursive class-brake-down sense but later on I have trouble finding the file again when I go looking for it (the one file can possible exist in many folders).

Does anyone know of a file system that uses tags instead of folders?.. Allowing me to find my files by a combination of tags.

If there was such a file system, I'm not sure how OSes would cope, being so deeply dependent on the folder system. I'm just curious if there is such tag- filesystems out there.

Thanks,

clinux.

EDIT: I came across this which isn't too bad tag2find, it solves my problems with finding stuff for now.

Answer 1

Without having tried them or seen them in the wild, there are for example

• http://nascent.freeshell.org/programming/TagFS/
• http://www.tagsistant.net/

Answer 2

What you are asking for is a Database File System. I know of one experimental implementation for Linux called DBFS. Microsoft started developing Windows Future Storage (WinFS) - it was planned to ship with Vista but due to technical problems the project was delayed and as far as I know finally canceled. NTFS is also capable of storing metadata for files but not to an extend of a full featured database file system.

The integration of such a file system into an operating system should not be that complicated for the core of the operating system - it can simply stick with the hierarchical model. The complex part is the (graphical) shell that must expose the structure and capabilities of the file system to the user.

Answer 3

Vista and Windows 7 support tagging of files. See this article

Answer 4

I don't think had (has) tagging support per se but BFS supports some pretty cool metadata functionality.

Answer 5

Here are some file systems which I found using google.

TagFS - "Tag Semantics for Hierarchical File Systems" paper by Stephan Bloehdorn and Max Völkel, 2006 http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.60.4187

dhtfs - "Tagging based filesystem, providing dynamic directory hierarchies based on tags associated with files" a usable implementation, last release 2007 http://code.google.com/p/dhtfs/

Tagsistant - "A reasoning semantic filesystem for Linux and BSD" project under active development http://www.tagsistant.net/

Leaftag - "Tagging for the Linux desktop" another implementation, last release 2006 http://www.chipx86.com/w/index.php/Leaftag

On integration with OSes, I dont think it should be that difficult. OSes are deeply dependent on file system hierarchy's but tag based file system can mimic directory structure. For example in a tag based file system the path /etc/init.d will give all the files that are tagged with exactly two tags i.e 'etc' and 'init.d'. For files which are tagged with other tags as well as these two tags, their extra tags can appear as directories inside /etc/init.d. If there is a file a.txt with three tags i.e 'etc', 'init.d' & 'asdf' then 'asdf' will appear as directory inside /etc/init.d and full path of a.txt will become /etc/init.d/asdf/a.txt.

Answer 6

Try tagfs. It's a fuse based user space file system. It can show tagged directories from a source directory in a tag filter view.

I.E. you have a directory 'vaccation india' which is tagged 'india' and 'photos'. You can filter all you photos by entering the directory '/my_mountpoint/photos'.

Directories are tagged through a simple text file. A file names '.tag' in the directory contains the tags. Multiple tags are separated by newlines.