How to get Source from a file path in commonMain

[VVictorWang]

Hi, I'm trying to use okio-multiplatform in my kotlin-multiplatform project for I/O. I'm wondering how can I get Source from a file path in commonMain? The examples provided are all getting Source from a jvm File. I mean, all examples provided only runs for jvm environment. So there's any way for us to operate file I/O in commonMain?

versions for okio-multiplatform: 2.5.0

[JakeWharton]

There is no way. For one it's unclear what we do in JS and WASM environments where access to files is far more encapsulated. If you're only doing Kotlin/JVM and Kotlin/Native you can expect/actual your own function for this.

Although I also don't believe we yet have a way to create a source from a file on native etiher...

[VVictorWang]

There is no way. For one it's unclear what we do in JS and WASM environments where access to files is far more encapsulated. If you're only doing Kotlin/JVM and Kotlin/Native you can expect/actual your own function for this.

Although I also don't believe we yet have a way to create a source from a file on native etiher...

Thanks for replying. Is there any plan for supporting file system access in native platform such as windows and linux? It is possible to do that, we just need to encapsulate Source and Sink stream system based on posix file system interfaces.

[swankjesse]

Nothing firm.

It’s easy to build the core featues of a FileSystem abstraction: read, write, move, delete.

But the complexity of the rest is a series of investments that grow into a sizable project:

• Directory traversal
• Read & write metadata for POSIX Windows
• Encodings of file names
• Symlinks, hard links, canonical paths
• Atomic vs. non-atomic file moves
• File system capacity & limits
• Special files like /dev/null and stdout
• Pipes
• Random access
• Memory mapped files
• Mechanisms to mount zip files

Also if we did it, we'd make sure the whole thing was friendly to testing. That makes the API a bit trickier because you need either FileSystem.SYSTEM or dependency injection.

There’s a bit of work on a FileSystem feature in kotlinx, but I’m worried they don’t value testing and may mess that part up.

[VVictorWang]

Thanks! Got the point, looking forward to FileSystem support in the future.