On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 1:22 PM, John Barham <jbarham@gmail.com> 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.

They solve the same class of problems, if you step back far enough.

If your application's mechanism of dealing with processing is to use the namespace, then binding new functionality over old is roughly equivalent to a plugin mechanism.

I mean sure you could use FTP to transfer files, but the old shell based tools are automagically plugged in with network capabilities when they deal with a FTP backed namespace right? So without any binary loader capabilities "cp" "mv" and other existing "small programs" are now "plugged in".

Dave

John