From: Legatus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2)Better network integration. I'd like to be able to open
/dev/ipv4/tcp/ip:port and have it connect to that ip and port. Similar
style for udp and ipv6. If ip is your own ip, it should create a
listening socket. Far easier than using socket() bind() listen() and
connect(), it makes sense in Unix fs, and would allow easy access to the
network by all applications. Read and write already work with sockets as
the file descriptor, why not open and close?
What you describe is not a filesystem, but more of virtual filesystem. You
want something to look like a filesystem. This would be like /proc. That
could be added without changing any existing filesystem. Just write the
kernel module to support it. I am not as convinced of the usefulness of
this. It seems somewhat obtuse to me, and I would probably just code the
connection in a more traditional way. I like that type of thinking though.
I have been accused of being obtuse myself a few times.
The advantage isn't to the guy writing a web browser. Its to all the other
apps. If the network is now a filesystem, you can write to the network from
any app that can write to a file. Emacs, vi, cat, etc would all be able to
write to/read from the network. Basicly, your app would become network
aware for 0 lines of code.
3)Better integration for higher order protocols. I'd like to be able to
open /http/servername/filename and be able to read that file from that
server via http. Similar structures for ftp and other protocols. All
these protocols do is process files anyway, why not make it easy for
programs to get those files without writing a full http stack? These
would probably an ability to make user mode filesystems, since we really
don't an http stack in the kernel.
I think there are some tools that will do this now. I know it is along the
same lines as webdavfs. I just don't know that they ever became very
popular, since the geeks know how to use cli tools quickly to do this, and
the gui environments seem to all have shortcut systems that mimic the idea
of drives or folders to the user, so they are happy. I like the idea, but
not enough to build it myself.
I looked into building it myself once. Checking out the VFS code got me off
the idea.
Gabe
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