Date: Wed, 2 Apr 1997 15:19:33 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> To: jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) Cc: terry@lambert.org, nate@mt.sri.com, proff@suburbia.net, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Internal clock Message-ID: <199704022219.PAA14691@phaeton.artisoft.com> In-Reply-To: <17726.860018737@time.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at Apr 2, 97 02:05:37 pm
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> > Frankly, I don't care about persistance other than the default
> > permission, which should be set correctly already so that most
> > everyone besides me doesn't care about persistance either.
>
> Coming from the guy who constantly exhorts us to remain *programmer
> interface* compatible, much less user compatible, with everything, I
> find this to be a rather blatant instance of holding firm principles
> only for as long as they suit the purposes of the arguments you're
> trying to advance, to be quickly discarded the moment they work
> against you. I expected better from you, Terry. :-)
What?
I don't exhort you to maintain compatability with everything -- just
commercial binaries that can't be easily recompiled, and (less so)
statically linked binaries linked against comeercial libraries which
can not be redistributed (ie: Motif). Most of that falls into the
"ABI compatability" arena.
I also expect you to comply with standards, though that hardly locks
you into compatability with anything, as Linux passing POSIX
ceritifcation proves.
I'd like to see you maintain ABI compatability, of course, but if
you'll remember, I was one of the first people on the "unmap page 0"
bandwagon (I even whined load enough that it became an option in SVR4;
page 0 is mapped on fault unless a configuration option is specified),
so a good reason is good enough.
Creating "well defined kernel interfaces" is a far cry from mandating
ABI interfaces: kernel interfaces are not exported. Any place they
are ("ps", "w", "ifconfig", "route", "netstat", etc.) is an error.
There is a big difference between "intra-kernel" calls by other kernel
code and "inter-kernel" calls by user code.
> > As far as putting code into rc.local & rc.shutdown: why doesn't that
> > count as transparent? Because we can't upgrade the rc scripts out
>
> Because it's not. It's not even close.
It's perfectly transparent to people who don't goo around in their
rc files. It's not my fault they aren't data driven an functionally
seperated enough that that's a larger number than I'd like it to be...
If you'll remember, I don't want people mucking with the rc files
enough that I advocate mounting root read-only.
Regards,
Terry Lambert
terry@lambert.org
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199704022219.PAA14691>