spacedrive/.tasks/LOC-005-virtual-locations-via-pure-hierarchical-model.md

id, title, status, assignee, parent, priority, tags, whitepaper

id	title	status	assignee	parent	priority	tags	whitepaper
LOC-005	Virtual Locations via Pure Hierarchical Model	To Do	james	LOC-000	High	core vdfs database refactor	Section 4.1.2, 4.3

Description

A "Location" should not be a rigid, physical path on a disk. It should be a virtual, named pointer to any directory Entry in the VDFS.

Implementation Notes

• [cite_start]The implementation should follow the detailed plan in the VIRTUAL_LOCATIONS_DESIGN.md [cite: 5552-5564] document.
• [cite_start]Drop relative_path column from the entries table[cite: 5555].
• [cite_start]Create directory_paths table to act as a denormalized cache for directory path strings [cite: 5555-5556].
• [cite_start]Modify locations table schema to store a reference to an entry_id instead of a string path[cite: 5559].
• [cite_start]Update indexing and move logic to populate and maintain the directory_paths table transactionally [cite: 5560-5561].
• [cite_start]Create a centralized PathResolver service to reconstruct full paths on demand[cite: 5563].

Acceptance Criteria

• A user can create a "Location" that points to any directory Entry, regardless of its physical path.
• The relative_path column is successfully removed from the database schema.
• Path reconstruction for files is performant, leveraging the directory_paths cache.
• [cite_start]Moving a directory correctly updates its path in the cache and triggers a background job to update descendant paths[cite: 5562].