Le 8 avr. 05, à 01:31, Alex Perez a écrit :
Network, power management, etc. configuration utilities (these would
be possible for a DE, but a lot more work since they would need to
wrap a variety of different low-level features rather than just one).
Not really. This is what Hardware Abstraction Layer aims to fix. Read
about it at http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software_2fhal since it's
outside the scope of this thread.
Not really too. HAL is just a mechanism to load the right driver when
you plug a device, then notify the desktop environment. HAL provides a
device object model and a devices database with various mechanisms to
populate it.
HAL provides no hardware configuration support that why its name is
misleading.
We would also be able to add kernel / base system features that would
enable extra high-level features. I intend to extend the KEvent
system in NetBSD, for example, to allow an application to register to
receive notifications of /any/ changes to the filesystem, not just
those for a monitored file descriptor - the mechanism for this kind
of notification already exists in Free- and NetBSD (but not in
Linux), although this particular notification has not been
implemented.
This assertion is completely false. Take a look at FAM. It's
completely cross-platform. FAM works with IRIX, Linux, *BSD. (FAM is
essentially for filesystem-monitoring what HAL is for hardware) Under
Linux 2.6, it uses kernel-level mechanisms to transparently watch file
access & modification. Linux does (and has, for some time) had exactly
the functionality you refer to. It just goes to show you that you
established a view of Linux at a fixed point in time and probably
haven't investigated whether or not certain things have changed. This
is kind of dangerous.
Alex, you missed the point completely here. FAM isn't so nice :
From FAM FAQ :
« Does FAM have any limitations?
One level: FAM was designed to monitor only one level deep. That is,
if you monitor a directory, FAM will report full details of any files
changing in that directory, the directory name if a file one level one
level deeper changed, and nothing if the event occurs deeper than
that. This makes FAM well-suited for graphical file managers (which
typically only show the contents of one directory at a time) or other
programs that monitor files they know the names of, but it will mean a
little bit of work if you want FAM to report all changes on a file
system. »
Moreover functionality is varying with platforms (FAM is just a daemon
with various monitor backends (poll, Linux, IRIX etc.)).
Linux still hasn't the functionality David is talking about, he is
talking about monitoring any file system changes not just a limited set
of inodes changes.
Linux has dnotify (FAM-like mechanism not really well implemented),
kqueue is equivalent to dnotify but with a better implementation and
the possibility to monitor any kernel events not only file systems
events.
As I said in my other mail, Robert Love has a patch with a feature
called "inotify" to add to Linux the functionality David is talking
about.
Quentin.
--
Quentin Mathé
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
