From owner-freebsd-hackers Sun Jul 5 23:52:32 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id XAA14624 for freebsd-hackers-outgoing; Sun, 5 Jul 1998 23:52:32 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from smtp02.primenet.com (daemon@smtp02.primenet.com [206.165.6.132]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id XAA14611 for ; Sun, 5 Jul 1998 23:52:28 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from tlambert@usr02.primenet.com) Received: (from daemon@localhost) by smtp02.primenet.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) id XAA15425; Sun, 5 Jul 1998 23:52:27 -0700 (MST) Received: from usr02.primenet.com(206.165.6.202) via SMTP by smtp02.primenet.com, id smtpd015402; Sun Jul 5 23:52:20 1998 Received: (from tlambert@localhost) by usr02.primenet.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) id XAA22028; Sun, 5 Jul 1998 23:52:18 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199807060652.XAA22028@usr02.primenet.com> Subject: Re: A really hoopy idea for variant symlinks. To: rkw@dataplex.net (Richard Wackerbarth) Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 06:52:18 +0000 (GMT) Cc: peter@taronga.com, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: from "Richard Wackerbarth" at Jul 5, 98 05:13:47 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > As for the mechanism to interogate and set them, this proposal seems OK to me. > However, to have appropriate value, we need to have A SINGLE VALUE (eg: > osversion) > that can be referenced from multiple places. Thus changing a single value > would change a number of links at the same time. It's a bit "plan9"-ish, depending on kernel enforcement of parsing semantics; I'd try to avoid that... The point about referential commutation is a good one. There are currently too many places values are duplicated. One that comes to mind is that IP addresses are both stored in a database, and stored as a transient attribute of a physical interface. Another example that doesn't exist too many places in FreeBSD is the storage of the machine name in multiple places (OK, it exists in the "port" and "packages", like "CAP" and "Samba" and "Apache" and ...). Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message