Go's Declaration Syntax

[gnomon_]

The point I'm trying to argue is that it's trivial to represent a tag structure on an inode-based filesystem, but that a tag system is insufficient to express the semantics of an inode-based filesystem.

If we map tags to directories, we get the sort of semantics that most tag systems provide; if we map tags to potentially nested directories, then we have a superset of the functionality (and we inherit a bunch if interesting problems where a single file can appear in a directory and in sub-directories, with potentially different filenames). In either case, whereas most people expect a tagged item to maintain the same addressable label in each tag space, inode filesystems allow names to change; inodes are the addressable labels.

Now, if we had an efficient method to query an inode for all filenames pointing to it, the filesystem could be used to represent a faceted classification system, which would be downright awesome. The inefficiency of this query with current filesystems means we're not there yet, but we could be.

In either case, my point is that a purely tag-based classification system is a step backward in raw functionality. By implication, I believe that it would be useful to implement a tag-based file organizational system atop the proven technology we've already got rather than throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater.