What kinds of things would you want in the GNU OS?

[Steve Savitzky]

In article <4315 at ficc.uu.net> peter at ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
>In article <106326 at sun.Eng.Sun.COM>, news at sun.Eng.Sun.COM (news) writes:
>> What kinds of things should be in the GNU Kernel?
...
>> 
>> File system:	SysV vs Berkeley? Something better?
>
>The Berkeley directory structure is, ahem, baroque. 14 character file
>names are too short. 255 is ridiculous. Just increase the size of
>struct dir to 32 bytes and use 30 characters. ..

Personally, I like 255-character filenames (well, maybe 127), for
filenames like "comp.unix.wizards-more.stuff.about.GNU.OS".  I HATE
arbitrary limits, especially when they're small.  The Macintosh :-( has a
32-character limit and I run up against it all the time.  This is
especially true when you have a browser (like dired) that lets you
point to a file and open it instead of having to type the whole name.


For networking I rather like the way Apollo handles a networked name
space (it's about the ONLY thing to like about Apollo :-) -- Root is /
and the network layer above it is //, so a complete pathname looks
like (e.g.) //steve/usr/bin

IMHO this is better than the way NFS does it (i.e. mounting
filesystems in random places) -- everything is in exactly one place in
the hierarchy.


Also, device drivers and even file systems (meaning directory
managers, not U*IX filesystems) ought to be ordinary processes that
work by exchanging messages.  This makes them loadable and unloadable
at any time.  In a network, you probably have to have some way of
specifying whether a particular executable can run on any machine, or
only on a specific one (e.g. the one your MIDI keyboard is attached to).
	

-- 
Stephen Savitzky                     apple.com!arc!steve
ADVANsoft Research Corp.             (408)727-3357
4301 Great America Parkway           #include<disclaimer.h>
Santa Clara, CA  95054               May the Source be with you!"