From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri Jul 3 06:04:08 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id GAA24935 for freebsd-hackers-outgoing; Fri, 3 Jul 1998 06:04:08 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from spooky.rwwa.com (rwwa.com [198.115.177.3]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id GAA24839 for ; Fri, 3 Jul 1998 06:03:56 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from witr@spooky.rwwa.com) Received: from spooky.rwwa.com (localhost.rwwa.com [127.0.0.1]) by spooky.rwwa.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id JAA02925 for ; Fri, 3 Jul 1998 09:07:21 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from witr@spooky.rwwa.com) Message-Id: <199807031307.JAA02925@spooky.rwwa.com> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0zeta 7/24/97 To: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Variant Link implementation, continued In-reply-to: Your message of "Thu, 02 Jul 1998 10:52:26 EDT." <199807021452.KAA15866@lakes.dignus.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Fri, 03 Jul 1998 09:07:21 -0400 From: Robert Withrow Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG rivers@dignus.com said: :- Eventually, we concluded that the fact that a symlink can change :- because of an 'external' influence was a bad idea. More or less, so did I. As you point it it seems to be an idea that doesn't scale well. In our environment of > 1000 computers and approx 100 automounted filesystems, I'd worry that the const of management of using this feature would exceed the benefit. Note that AMD solves a similiar problem in different way. For example, /usr/global/bin gets directed to the correct filesystem based on the architecture/os. Perhaps a *limited* form of this feature (for example, not involving a users ENV) might be useful. I don't think that our internal support people would like a sitation where who filesystem subtrees disappear or get misdirected do to a hapless user accidentally clobbering a environment variable named, say, "OS". I'd urge caution here. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Robert Withrow, R.W. Withrow Associates, Swampscott MA, witr@rwwa.COM To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message