Design decisions

The following are some design decisions that I have made concerning FlickrFS and the reasoning behind them. Anyone may email me if they think they have a justification for or against any of these decisions.

Creating a Photoset

In Flickr, a user must create a new photoset AND add a photo to the photoset before it can be saved. This means that a user cannot create an empty photoset. Mkdir tries to create an empty directory (or photoset in our case) which cannot happen.

Solutions:

• Require the user to create photosets using the Flickr website.
  • Easy solution but inconvenient to the user. FlickrFS could still be used to manage photos but not photosets.
• Create empty photosets in the file system and sync with Flickr only when photoset is not empty.
  • Complex coding. Need to add empty photoset logic to the caching system and add conditionals in rmdir (when deleting the last photo of a photoset) and mkdir (to create the empty photosets).

Deleting a Photoset

Should removing a photoset directory delete the photos or just remove them from the photoset?

Soutions:

• Delete the photo from the flickr account.
  • Social expectation - a user might expect that this is the correct action since most file systems adhere to deleting a file completely.
• Delete photo from photoset.
  • Similar to how things work in the Flickr website.