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Re: DogCows or Polymorphism in the Hurd
From: |
Jonathan S. Shapiro |
Subject: |
Re: DogCows or Polymorphism in the Hurd |
Date: |
Fri, 10 Feb 2006 21:09:01 -0500 |
On Sat, 2006-02-11 at 00:38 +0100, Patrick Negre wrote:
> Ok, but i want my ls command to list files, i will be very confuse if one of
> my file is listed as many time as the number of translators set on it.
> I expect my command "rm f" to remove a file not a view.
>
> I want my system to be sufficently smart to understand that "cd foo.tar.gz"
> mean i wanna browse foo.tar.gz, and after execution i expect to be in
> "foo.tar.gz/" as i asked. ( under the condition foo.tar.gz is browsable .
>
> I expect, when i command a "cat whatever", that the system will understand
> that i wanna access "whatever" as a file.
>
> I want to have a simple way to access a file with a non default view, like
> ( it's an example ) : "cat whatever::binary"
Patrick:
I understand that you believe you want these things. Unfortunately, you
will find that the consequences of *having* these things are an unusable
and inconsistent system.
> Tom Bachmann wrote:
> > the problem is that POSIX only specifies one reserved character, '/',
> > and thus foo.tar.bz2:as_dir is a valid name. So such a file could exist.
> Does POSIX specify anything about polytype files ?
POSIX does not, but it is not important. In the polytype case, it is a
matter of adding new system calls, which is okay. In the namespace case,
we would be required to violate the POSIX rules.
> All this can't be possible if the system don't handle unspecified access, as
> the POSIX open(), or stat().
I am not clear what you mean by unspecified access. In the polytype
proposal, all access is specified and straightforward.
> To handle this access, unspecified access can be mapped to a default
> translator.
I think this is the main source of confusion. There is no "mapping to a
translator" in POSIX. There is only "opening a facet that is bound to a
name".
The knowledge of polytype behavior is necessarily restricted to new,
polytype-aware programs.
> Absolute and comprehensive path like "./foo.tar.gz::gzip/f.xml::xml/value"
> are
> possible and share by every applications, aware or not of polytype
> possibilities.
This violates existing standards. We need to understand if it may break
existing applications.
> This is my simple user proposition.
Well, it is your proposition. In practice, I don't think it is simple.
However, I do not wish to be entirely negative. There are some very
important things that we have all agreed on in this discussion:
1. We want polytype, not DogCow
2. There are several views about name binding, but all of them
associate names with facets in 1:1 fashion. Some are more dynamic
than others.
Given this, I want to suggest that we have enough information to choose
a design strategy. Also, I want to suggest that our preferences will
change with experience, and we should not obsess about them now.
Jonathan
- Re: DogCows or Polymorphism in the Hurd, (continued)
- Message not available
- Re: DogCows or Polymorphism in the Hurd, Jonathan S. Shapiro, 2006/02/06
- Re: DogCows or Polymorphism in the Hurd, Patrick Negre, 2006/02/07
- Re: DogCows or Polymorphism in the Hurd, Tom Bachmann, 2006/02/07
- Re: DogCows or Polymorphism in the Hurd, Marcus Brinkmann, 2006/02/08
- Re: DogCows or Polymorphism in the Hurd, Tom Bachmann, 2006/02/08
- Re: DogCows or Polymorphism in the Hurd, Marcus Brinkmann, 2006/02/08
- Re: DogCows or Polymorphism in the Hurd, Patrick Negre, 2006/02/09
- Re: DogCows or Polymorphism in the Hurd, Marcus Brinkmann, 2006/02/09
- Re: DogCows or Polymorphism in the Hurd, Jonathan S. Shapiro, 2006/02/09
- Re: DogCows or Polymorphism in the Hurd, Patrick Negre, 2006/02/10
- Re: DogCows or Polymorphism in the Hurd,
Jonathan S. Shapiro <=
- Re: DogCows or Polymorphism in the Hurd, Marcus Brinkmann, 2006/02/11
- Re: DogCows or Polymorphism in the Hurd, Ivan Shmakov, 2006/02/13
- Re: DogCows or Polymorphism in the Hurd, Marcus Brinkmann, 2006/02/14
- Re: DogCows or Polymorphism in the Hurd, Ivan Shmakov, 2006/02/14
- capabilities and POSIX ``emulation'', Ivan Shmakov, 2006/02/14
- Re: DogCows or Polymorphism in the Hurd, Marcus Brinkmann, 2006/02/07
- Re: DogCows or Polymorphism in the Hurd, Patrick Negre, 2006/02/08
- Re: DogCows or Polymorphism in the Hurd, Tom Bachmann, 2006/02/08
- Re: DogCows or Polymorphism in the Hurd, Filip Brcic, 2006/02/08
- Re: DogCows or Polymorphism in the Hurd, Tom Bachmann, 2006/02/08