From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu From: "Douglas A. Gwyn" Message-ID: <3D59BCAD.A375959A@null.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: Subject: Re: [9fans] Ephase question. Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2002 08:42:44 +0000 Topicbox-Message-UUID: dca52c10-eaca-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 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.)