trunk/core/src/main/java/org/apache/commons/vfs2/operations/FileOperation.java

/*
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
 * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
 * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
 * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 * limitations under the License.
 */
package org.apache.commons.vfs2.operations;

import org.apache.commons.vfs2.FileSystemException;

/**
 * <p>
 * A FileOperation is an object that brings an extra function to a FileObject.
 * The VFS provides the basic functionality to deal with FileObject's. That is
 * create, delete, rename, copy, and so on functions. However, if you are working with
 * FileSystem and its files are, for example, under Version Control System (VCS)
 * you might want to get an access to the versioning framework and to be able to
 * manage your files regarding VCS (e.g. commit them, update, get logs, etc.).
 * Such type of extended functionality is provided by FileOperation.
 * </p>
 * <p>
 * The FileOperation interface is a genetic interface that should not be
 * implemented directly. It rather should be extended by other interfaces that
 * provide some concrete functions.
 * </p>
 * <p>
 * FileOperation is provided by
 *
 * @see FileOperationProvider Especially the FileOperationProvider is responsible
 *      for looking up and instantiating any concrete FileOperation.
 *      </p>
 *
 * @since 0.1
 */
public interface FileOperation
{

    /**
     * Performs necessary actions that are related to the concrete
     * implementation of a FileOperation.
     *
     * @throws FileSystemException if an error occurs
     */
    void process() throws FileSystemException;
}