Re: [9fans] Installed Plan 9, now what?

[Dan Cross <cross@math.psu.edu>]

"Russ Cox" <rsc@swtch.com> writes:
> > Bearing in mind that right now there's no benefit to site, since it
> > doesn't exist,
>
> this isn't fair -- the question is what the benefit would be
> if it were there.

Fair enough.

> > the only thing I could thing of would be to override
> > applyopts (e.g., to strip out -u).  Other users might come along,
> > such as doing the `srv -AWP' trick, etc.  Other than that?  No, not
> > right now, anyway.  Since it's a zero-cost thing, plugging it in for
> > the future wouldn't hurt much, though.
>
> well, no.  it does add to the complexity of the system,

What complexity?  An if and a `.'?  I understand the argument that if
you add an if and a . everywhere, pretty soon we end up with a bloated
system, but I don't think this is the straw that's going to break the
camel's back.

> and as presotto said there are a lot of redirects already.

I didn't understand that comment then, and I don't really understand it
now.  What's being redirected here?  The idea is just to provide a
mechanism to interject local policy.

> i intended from the very beginning for people to customize
> /dist/replica/plan9 to suit their local systems.
>
> if there are more sensible defaults, i'd rather get them
> done right in the files to begin with than require everyone
> to edit /dist/replica/site.

The point isn't to require anything, but to provide mechanism.

Of course, optimizing for the common case by providing sensible
defaults so the majority can ignore /dist/replica/site should remain
the primary goal, but I don't understand how adding
`site=/dist/replica/site; if ( test -r $site ) .  $site' is going to
hurt much.  Or, even better, have the scripts dot a defaults file,
which might look for a site override.  So much of the replica scripts
are boilerplate, it just seems like a mistake not to provide a
defaulting mechanism.

	- Dan C.