Feedback on use case: Gobid

[james-pre]

Hey @Garciat!

Recently I found your article using ZenFS for a Go typechecker called Gobid.

I wanted to get some feedback, since you mentioned you needed to spend hours debugging and ended up with over 400 lines of code to bridge the gap. If you don't mind, I have some questions.

1. I noticed you worked with the Internal API instead of using the VFS. Could you please explain why? Was this only because of esm.sh#763?
2. When adding custom I/O streams, you chose not to create custom devices. Why? Is the devices API to confusing or difficult to use?
3. How helpful would support for TTYs be (including standard I/O)?
4. What would have improved your experience with ZenFS?

I'd really appreciate any feedback you could give.

[Garciat]

Hi James!

Thanks for reaching out! I think it's super cool to see a library author asking for feedback.

I will try my best to remember the context around the decisions I made at the time, but please forgive if I am a bit vague with some points. It's been a few months and I've flushed away a lot of that context from my memory.

1. At first I tried to use the built-in Node.js compatibility layer (i.e. emulating the fs module). That would have been the ideal scenario for me, because that's what Go's WASM bridge layer expects. But then the emulated fs module was not 100% compatible (I can't remember exactly how). Then I think I tried to use the new ZenFS APIs; but IIRC there were some low-level behaviors that I could not emulate and that's why I dropped to the internal API. Or perhaps it was about having to deal with "raw" file descriptors.
2. I remember taking a look at the device concept, but it wasn't immediately clear how to use it correctly. It seemed like a low-level API to me. I did realize that a more generic solution would have to use them eventually. But my use case did not need "interactive" I/O streams, if that makes sense.
3. I guess TTY support would help if I were producing colors straight from the compiler output. But in my demo app, I decided to colorize on the frontend.
4. I haven't checked recent versions, but initially it would've helped a lot if the Node.js fs compatibility were 100% accurate.