computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computer, computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and the development of both computer hardware, hardware and softw ...

, a fileset is a

set Set, The Set, SET or SETS may refer to: Science, technology, and mathematics Mathematics *Set (mathematics), a collection of elements *Category of sets, the category whose objects and morphisms are sets and total functions, respectively Electro ...

computer file A computer file is a System resource, resource for recording Data (computing), data on a Computer data storage, computer storage device, primarily identified by its filename. Just as words can be written on paper, so too can data be written to a ...

s linked by defining property or common characteristic. There are different types of fileset though the context will usually give the defining characteristic. Sometimes it is necessary to explicitly state the fileset type to avoid ambiguity, an example is the

emacs Emacs (), originally named EMACS (an acronym for "Editor Macros"), is a family of text editors that are characterized by their extensibility. The manual for the most widely used variant, GNU Emacs, describes it as "the extensible, customizable, s ...

editor which explicitly mentions its ''Version Control'' (VC) fileset type to distinguish from its "named files" fileset type.

Fileset types

While there is probably no classification of fileset types some common usage cases do emerge: * A fileset type where the set of files in the fileset are simply enumerated or selected, as an example in the way named filesets are constructed in emacs. * The set of files included in a software installation package is used in both the

AIX operating system AIX (pronounced ) is a series of proprietary Unix operating systems developed and sold by IBM since 1986. The name stands for "Advanced Interactive eXecutive". Current versions are designed to work with Power ISA based server and workstatio ...

installation packaging system, and the

HP-UX HP-UX (from "Hewlett Packard Unix") is a proprietary software, proprietary implementation of the Unix operating system developed by Hewlett Packard Enterprise; current versions support HPE Integrity Servers, based on Intel's Itanium architect ...

packaging system. * For fileset types relating to filesystems there may be a relationship to directories. In terms of ''Namespace Database (NSDB) Protocol for Federated File Systems'': * In coding forms some libraries may define a fileset object type, typically as a case specific name ''Fileset'', or ''FileSet'' which is used to hold an object which references a set of files.

Specific examples

Fileset has several meanings and usages, depending on the context. Some examples are: In the

installation packaging system it is the smallest individually installable unit (a collection of files that provides a specific function). DCE/DFS uses the term fileset to define a tree containing directories, files, and mount points (links to other DFS filesets). A DFS fileset is also a unit of administrative control. Properties such as data location, storage quota, and replication are controlled at this level of granularity. The concept of a fileset in DFS is essentially identical to the concept of a

volume Volume is a measure of regions in three-dimensional space. It is often quantified numerically using SI derived units (such as the cubic metre and litre) or by various imperial or US customary units (such as the gallon, quart, cubic inch) ...

in AFS. The glamor filesystem uses the same concept of filesets. Filesets are lightweight components compared to file systems, so management of a file set is easier. In

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

GPFS GPFS (General Parallel File System, brand name IBM Storage Scale and previously IBM Spectrum Scale) is a high-performance clustered file system software developed by IBM. It can be deployed in shared-disk or shared-nothing distributed parallel ...

represents a set of files within a file system which have an independent inode space.

References

{{wiktionary, fileset Computing terminology