Re: Let's do some coding :-)

[ness]

Jonathan S. Shapiro wrote:
> I have hesitated to suggest this after Linus's most recent faux pas, but
> I think that there may be something more useful to do than coding.
>
> First: the Hurd community must come to a decision about what the design
> principles of the system will be.

This was already done by marcus and neal, AFAIK.
Anyway, I'll answer the answers from my point of view.

> Is "real time" important?

No.

> Is avoiding
> DoR important?

Yes.

> Is support for ACLs important given that they don't
> actually work and interact badly with capabilities?

Yes. One of our aimes is to build a unix replacing OS.

> At what level?

The POSIX layer.

> Should persistence be part of the system design?

Yes. It solves some problems in a very elegant way. Of course it raises 
new ones, too.
> Each of these decisions will significantly restrict the feasible design
> space in certain key areas. They will determine which designs are
> feasible and which can be discarded because the principles are violated.
>
> After this, the next step is to design protocols using IDL. The IDL
> should include both the statement of the interfaces and their
> documentation (this is the hidden power of CapIDL -- it does something
> very similar to doxygen). In particular, the low-level foundations of
> the system need to have specified 
>
> These interfaces will serve to define the contracts between various
> developers. Once these contracts exist, productive coding can begin.
>
> shap
--
-ness-