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javavisual-sourcesafe

What are filesystem dot attributes or filesystem.attributes files?

I got a Java project from another developer and I found several files with these two names strewn around the source folder:

vssver.scc
filesystem.attributes

I know the first one is from Visual SourceSafe but what about the second? Are these files from Visual SourceSafe too?

It's difficult to search this as Google simply ignores the dot character in between, even if I put the whole thing in quotes.

Edit: File contents are binary but mostly have references to classes from Java and libraries:

binary file contents

Solution

  • After some digging, it looks to be a (presumably obsolete) Netbeans thing. The only real reference I could find is this Netbeans mailing list post from August 2000, which says it was used to store various IDE metadata about each file.

    It is created automatically when you modify some attributes of a file using the IDE itself. [...] Every file (including directories) stores its attributes in a filesystem.attributes located alongside it (in the same containing directory). FileUtil.extractJar specially recognizes filesystem.attributes in a JAR, so if you jar up your directory then when it is extracted the jarred attributes will be applied to the extraction folder.

    The post mentions a "future reimplementation" using an XML-based filesystem, which I think has happened by now. This later post mentions using the name .nbattrs to replace the old filesystem.attributes. I'm not a NetBeans user, but this seems to be what happened; for instance, I found an example in this gist.