Re: [9fans] Binary format

[Nick LaForge <nicklaforge@gmail.com>]

Enrico Weigelt <weigelt@metux.de> wrote:
>> And another important feature of shared libraries is, that when
>> some lib is updated, importing programs dont have to be recompiled.

Enrico Weigelt <weigelt@metux.de> wrote:
> Actually, that's just a matter of clean dependency handling.
> Include an API/ABI version in the filename, etc.

Why create single points of failure?  The complexity to justify
creating a bureaucracy delegating responsibility of libraries to
different people is not there in Plan9.  The libraries are for
convenience and orthogonality; they are not the definitive API.  That
is defined by the kernel and by 9P.  They really are the black boxes.
And shouldn't you be inspecting any new code paths when using new
code?  Why assume the library writer has tested against YOUR code in
all paths, and bump to the new version, risking regression?

This to me seems insane for production environments, and is all too
common in the open source world where people seem to be writing new
code for it's own sake and to everyone's detriment.

A nice benefit of taking the simple route early on is that it becomes
easier down the road to implement the functionality in one fell swoop,
top-down.  Maybe in the future the kernel could remove redundant code.
 9vx and it's ilk already do something somewhat orthogonal to this by
executing code that is shorter after it's been dynamically re-written.