> > > Would there be any interest in having GNU Mach and Hurd move way from > > > /dev into having a kernel-provided translator that exports kernel symbols > > > including devices? > > My main concern with this is that some Linux progs (eg sound) will look > > for /dev/audio, /dev/cdrom and so on... > > Personally, I think shouldn't be a concern of ours, for both technical > and aesthetic reasons > > First, the technical: Should you wish to make your machine look like > a linux box, it would not be too hard to create a translator that > overlayed a virtual /dev/, /etc/, /usr/bin, and other forms of unix > brokenness to create a "virtual linux environment" - thus it is > unneccessary to force us to use the old, broken syntax to do things. > > Secondly, the aesthetic: Slavish emulation of linux, which is but an > emulation of unix, will cause us to create something like win3.1 - > a big hideous hack on top of a system simply not designed to handle it.
Yes; I agree with this, but ATM we have a vast pile of apps to port - and if there is some support of /dev/foo, then it saves us having to rewirte chunks of apps that need /dev/foo: sure there may well be a better way to implement things like CD players, but a port of the linux ones is probably a quick fix (and I would suggest that the work spent on writing a CD player couldbe better spent elsewhere...) Matthew -- Elen sila lumenn' omentielvo Steward of the Cambridge Tolkien Society Selwyn College Computer Support http://www.cam.ac.uk/CambUniv/Societies/tolkien/ http://pick.sel.cam.ac.uk/ Debian GNU/Hurd - love at first byte
