linux registry (no, not that again!)

[Matthew Miller]

[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 at mattdm.org        <http://www.mattdm.org/>
Boston University Linux      ------>                <http://linux.bu.edu/>