Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wasatch!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcvax!ukc!dcl-cs!aber-cs!pcg
From: pcg@aber-cs.UUCP (Piercarlo Grandi)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: is this wise?
Summary: Everything a file? No, everything a process!
Message-ID: <916@aber-cs.UUCP>
Date: 8 May 89 16:12:12 GMT
Reply-To: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi)
Distribution: eunet,world
Organization: Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth
	(Disclaimer: my statements are purely personal)
Lines: 33

In article <9321@alice.UUCP> dmr@alice.UUCP writes:

	[ on the idea of putting every type of object, e.g. TCP connections,
	networks, protocol suites in the file system, via portals or
	virtual filesystems ]
    
    Nevertheless, the idea could probably be pushed through.
    (Indeed, as someone pointed out, it was done in Chaosnet.)

It was also hinted in the original 4.2BSD design, which never got implemented,
for portals and user implemented domains and wrappers and ...

    In particular, Rick Adams's reductions to absurdity are
    quite close to things that the Plan 9 system (as opposed to
    Ninth Edition) actually does; as many of its abstractions
    as possible are mapped into the file system.

I vastly prefer the MUSS way of using as uniform referent the process rather
than the file like in Unix. MUSS defines an hideously efficient and well
designed IPC mechanism, and then everything is a process, including devices,
e.g. devices, ...; this is very powerful, as then you can substitute a process
for a device, or ... [ MUSS is described in SP&E, August 1979 ].

On some similar lines was Accent (now Mach), in which the uniform referent for
all kinds of object was the IPC port. Again, great flexibility, because behind
a port you could a process.

Hiding a process behind a file or filesystem or directory is less easy and
natural, I think.
-- 
Piercarlo "Peter" Grandi           | ARPA: pcg%cs.aber.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth        | UUCP: ...!mcvax!ukc!aber-cs!pcg
Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk