Hi, On Wed, Apr 02, 2008 at 09:23:20AM +0200, Ludovic Courtès wrote: > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > A filesystem based interface is much easier to use for most > > programmers than generic RPCs. > > It's easier to use from a shell, not from a C program. Actually, most people will consider it easier to use it from a C program as well: For one, it means that you can use the *same* knowledge for doing stuff on the shell, and for writing C programs. That's a very valuable property IMHO. Even more importantly, every UNIX programmer is already familiar with using files, while RPCs is something they need to learn explicitely to hack Hurd stuff -- a major entry barrier. For these reasons, while native RPC interfaces might be more elegant in theory, filesystem-based interfaces are usually *much* more useful in practice. > > In this particular case however I don't see the need for a > > specialised RPC interface -- neither is performance critical, nor do > > we have complicated relationships that could be better expressed by > > such an interface... > > My understanding is that the Hurd's way is to use a new RPC interface > whenever using the `io' interface would be non-trivial or cumbersome > (e.g., `password', `auth', etc.). Well, auth for example is a special case: The filesystem itself relies on it, so using an FS interface here would create a circular dependency... More generally, you are right. (Though personally I tend to FS-based interfaces much more than many other people here...) However, I don't see anything cumbersome in using an FS-based interface to control sockets... -antrik-
