[further discussion here should be moved off of the fedora-devel list --
this is basically just noise to the poor fedora developers. So I've set
reply-to to me.]
On Wed, Jul 28, 2004 at 04:52:17PM +0100, Jonathan Andrews wrote:
1) Everything more than "Hello world" needs to store some
configuration,
so doesn't that make it a requirement of most applications hence a lot
of processes within the application.
That's not necessarily true.
2) By putting a simple quick and understandable system in the kernel
its
more likely to be adopted.
Heh. Go propose this on the linux-kernel mailing list and see how quickly it
gets anywhere, let alone adopted. This is a totally user-space task, and
would just add bloat to the kernel (and attendant additional security
concerns).
3) Present in the kernel = No dependency on external libs, making it
more likely to be adopted.
Well, the point aside above, that's not necessarily true either. You could
put it in libc. (But still shouldn't.)
4) Kernel = common API - if people would only need another API if
the
configuration need was more complex than the base line, and mostly it
is not.
There's quite a lot more to the common Unix API than kernel syscalls
already.
5) Why not show some leadership instead of just cloning Unix/Posix -
"As
little as possible" need not be that same as "Not enough to be complete"
This isn't leadership -- it'd be a step backward. The kernel should stick to
the minimal set of core functionality needed for a *kernel*. In fact,
there's talk of moving things like the IDE drivers into user space. Putting
a config file finding and parsing routine into the kernel would be, frankly,
horrid.
--
Matthew Miller mattdm(a)mattdm.org <
http://www.mattdm.org/>
Boston University Linux ------> <
http://linux.bu.edu/>