MiniMax wrote:Thraka - Proper handling of file attributes in DOSBox is difficult due to the need for platform independence. If DOSBox is running on say Linux there is no place in the Linux filesystem to store attributes like ARCHIVE, HIDDEN or SYSTEM.
I can understand the need for a cross-platform solution, but doesn't it make sense to support it straight across for platforms that actually have the attributes in question? On a Windows machine, what is essentially happening is DosBox uses Windows calls to read a directory get a file's attributes, then throws away the results for attributes that other platforms don't have because there is no cross platform solution.
As a suggestion for cross-platform hacks, most unixy filesystems have extended attributes that no one uses or cares about. In many cases, the kernels don't even care about them. Some of them do have effects, but are harmless enough that they could be reused. For example, the secure deletion attribute ('s') seems to me to be a good candidate for system.
As far as hidden goes, why not use the accepted method over all of unixdom, which is the prefix period. I don't know of any DOS file that starts with a period - I don't think it's possible in DOS without a sector editor. Simply have hidden files start with a period and filter it out when the name is fed to DosBox programs. Is there anything existing this could break?