From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri Jul 3 19:28:04 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id TAA25493 for freebsd-hackers-outgoing; Fri, 3 Jul 1998 19:28:04 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from antipodes.cdrom.com (castles316.castles.com [208.214.167.16]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id TAA25448 for ; Fri, 3 Jul 1998 19:27:55 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mike@antipodes.cdrom.com) Received: from antipodes.cdrom.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by antipodes.cdrom.com (8.8.8/8.8.5) with ESMTP id TAA07480; Fri, 3 Jul 1998 19:28:32 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199807040228.TAA07480@antipodes.cdrom.com> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0zeta 7/24/97 To: Garance A Drosihn cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Variant Link implementation, continued In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 03 Jul 1998 16:13:48 EDT." Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Fri, 03 Jul 1998 19:28:32 -0700 From: Mike Smith Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > At 9:16 PM -0700 7/2/98, Mike Smith wrote: > >> I think there would be less headaches all-around if symlinks did not > >> key off environment variables, although I do think we'd want them to > >> key off of something as simple to adjust as environment variables are. > > > > This expresses my opinion quite succinctly. Overloading the > > environment space to also control variant links would be a Very > > Bad Idea, simply because the risk of name collision is too high. > > > > Allowing links to indicate that they *should* be keyed off the > > environment space, OTOH, isn't such a sin. eg: > > > > ${sysctl:hw.arch} and ${env:USER} > > > Now that I've caught up on my sleep a bit, I do think something > along these lines could be promising. I can't find Terry's > earlier suggestion (even though I know I reread it just last > night), but I think that what I want might not be all that much > different from what he suggested. > > Let's say there are three namespaces (just to pick a number): > sys > session > process This is immediately bad, in that you want a name from the 'session' namespace to be able to (optionally) override a matching name from the 'sys' namespace. My personal preference is *still* to use an isolated portion of the parameter space, preferably one not currently used for anything else. -- \\ Sometimes you're ahead, \\ Mike Smith \\ sometimes you're behind. \\ mike@smith.net.au \\ The race is long, and in the \\ msmith@freebsd.org \\ end it's only with yourself. \\ msmith@cdrom.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message