The file system needs a structure to store data of its entries. It
has to support as flat as hierarchical visits in order to organize
files in multiple-level directories. In addition, stored data should
hold its own attributes to satisfy ordinary
requests.
Another very useful feature that should be provided, consists in configuring the base directories hierarchy to suit anyone needs: although someone prefers to view packages simply by their name, other users may choose to browse them by categories, or priorities.
In the end, we have to think about the kind of data that are going to be created in PackageFS. There are symbolic links, directories, and a small amount of fakefiles. These latter are empty files which may provide access to packages metadata. Thus, since no one of such entities occupy significant physical disk space, this structure can quite easily reside in the primary memory.