On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 10:17 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: > John Floren wrote: >> I probably didn't read the iosrv and hubfs stuff well enough, but >> multi-pipes are not like gnu screen--unless hubfs and/or iosrv can >> do barriers and reduces and I just missed that part? > > The connection to screen is really only in usage. Iosrv and Hubfs > were the result of trying to give myself persistent rc shells in Plan > 9. Because of the absence of the TTY layer, it seemed like the thing > to do was to buffer and multiplex each file descriptor of a shell, and > allow multiple clients to connect to those buffers. > > Even though this architecture was created for keeping persistent rc > shells around, I realized that it was actually a very beautiful > general purpose extension of the original unix pipes, and could be > used for a large number of purposes, including cluster processing type > applications. > > So the connection to screen is not "technical" at all - just that the > main purpose I wrote iosrv/hubfs for (and btw hubfs is vastly superior > to iosrv for practical use if anyone is interested) was to keep > persistent rc shells around on remote machines for analogous usage to > screen. > > Anyway, I think multipipes/hubs/pipemuxers are just a good idea for > Plan 9 (and probably standard unixes too) and that they fit > beautifully with 9P and the whole system. I'd like to move forward > with trying to make good Plan 9 software and not have this particular > little patent kerfuffle turn into anything majorly disruptive. > > Ben Kidwell > "mycroftiv" > > -Who would rather go back to trying to explain ANTS and hoping > that other Plan 9 users would take an interest and explore it. >
Well, you made it a kerfuffle, and then somebody decided to post it to HN, so well done that. If you come in saying "Oh look somebody made a patent but I think this is prior art", expect a kerfuffle. (That's a good word. Kerfuffle) Looking through my mail archives, I found a link from Eric that led me to http://graverobbers.blogspot.com/search/label/brasil which I think contains the seeds of multi-pipes. Note that these were all posted prior to your time-traveling expedition. john
