From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Date: Mon,  2 Feb 2009 14:07:28 -0800
From: "Roman V. Shaposhnik" <rvs@sun.com>
In-reply-to: <4f34febc0902021322x12767a07rcffdbe8d1c349438@mail.gmail.com>
To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net>
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Subject: Re: [9fans] Pegasus 2.6 is released
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On Mon, 2009-02-02 at 13:22 -0800, John Barham wrote:
> >  You're missing the beauty of 9p. Who needs dynload() when you have
> mount()?
>
> Mount allows me to add new names to the process namespace.  Dynload
> allows me to call functions or access data in a library that is not
> known to the process (e.g., scripting language interpreter) until
> runtime.  They solve different problems.

Depends on your point of view. Except for accessing data directly
in the same address space, dynload() is just a way of doing fast
RPC. In that line of thought, 9P offers you a very similar mechanism.

I think the most obvious example of how 9P can be used to provide the
kind of extensibility that folks usually associate with dynload()
is factotum. Especially if you compare it with things like PAM.

Thanks,
Roman.