From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Jul 2 08:26:27 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id IAA09075 for freebsd-hackers-outgoing; Thu, 2 Jul 1998 08:26:27 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from mail1.its.rpi.edu (root@mail1.its.rpi.edu [128.113.100.7]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id IAA08990 for ; Thu, 2 Jul 1998 08:26:15 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from drosih@rpi.edu) Received: from [128.113.24.47] (gilead.acs.rpi.edu [128.113.24.47]) by mail1.its.rpi.edu (8.8.8/8.8.6) with ESMTP id LAA18068; Thu, 2 Jul 1998 11:26:00 -0400 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" X-Sender: drosih@pop1.rpi.edu Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <15895.899343408@time.cdrom.com> References: Your message of "Wed, 01 Jul 1998 16:18:44 EDT." Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 11:29:51 -0400 To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" From: Garance A Drosihn Subject: Re: Variant Link implementation, continued Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG At 6:36 PM -0700 7/1/98, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: >> My initial reaction is that I wouldn't want links to depend on values >> in environment variables. If I setup some "clean environment" for a >> program I'm exec-ing, I'm not going to think to copy values which are >> important for these links to work. > > If you have ever used Apollo's Domain/OS, the advantages of having > synlink behavior be configurable by something as dynamic as the user's > environment become very quickly apparent. :) There's a difference between "being dynamically configurable" and "being part of a namespace which users, scripts, and programs are already clobbering on a regular basis with no current need to worry what that might do to filesystem access". I should note that I do want something that's readily configurable. I just don't think the user-environment is the best place to hold that. We'll still be getting programs from many other sources which will blindly manipulate the standard user environment, and which will not be worried about what that might do to file system access. I would be a little more specific here on what I'd like to see for that, but I haven't quite settled on what that would be... In some sense I'd like a session-level database of keys/values, such that I could type in something in one xterm, and have that effect all active applications (or maybe just all applications which *start* after I enter the command -- even if they are not started from that xterm window). On the other hand, I have a sneaking suspicion that isn't quite what I want either... --- Garance Alistair Drosehn = gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu Senior Systems Programmer or drosih@rpi.edu Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message