From owner-freebsd-hackers  Wed Apr  2 14:34:54 1997
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To: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>
cc: avalon@coombs.anu.edu.au, proff@suburbia.net, hackers@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: devfs 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 02 Apr 1997 14:41:38 MST."
             <199704022141.OAA14577@phaeton.artisoft.com> 
Date: Wed, 02 Apr 1997 14:33:05 -0800
Message-ID: <17949.860020385@time.cdrom.com>
From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org
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> Move the process environment into the kernel on the other side of a
> system call, and you can have all the variant links your crooked
> little heart desires.

I think indirecting through sysctl() would be a lot easier.  I didn't
WANT to rearchitect the entire process environment handling mechanism,
perturbing everything from the kernel to libc, I was looking for a
lower-impact change.

And besides, if I were going to redo environment handling, I wouldn't
just shove the default environment handling into the kernel and yell
"Done!", I'd implement a whole multi-tier namespace with process
local, group local and systemwide logical names.  Why bother adding
more abstraction to that mechanism otherwise?  All that work just to
achieve an equivalent status quo (with variant symlinks as the only
added benefit) would be just silly.

					Jordan