Re: [9fans] Ephase question.

["Douglas A. Gwyn" <DAGwyn@null.net>]

Russ Cox wrote:
> I don't know.  Plan 9 has 48 system calls these days,
> 10 of which are deprecated.  So 38.  That's still a lot.

It would be an interesting academic exercise to determine the
minimal set.  E.g. close() doesn't seem to be needed; whenever
there's no reference to the object, any connection to it can be
cleaned up.  At least for Unix devices, it was only the *last*
close that did anything interesting.  And I've sometimes had
the feeling that bind and mount aren't dissimilar enough to
require separation.  The trick is to combine function in some
natural way, not merely tunnel through the syscall port then
expand again on the other side.

Would it be possible for a 9P-like system to make all service
calls just access a server within the protocol?  E.g., instead
of open() there would be a channel that handles 9P-open packets
(as well as other 9P packets).  (Apologies if I've garbled the
details; the general idea is all I'm wondering about.)