[9fans] The PATENTED IBM MULTI-PIPE : the evolution of unix pipes

[mycroftiv@sphericalharmony.com]

John Floren wrote:
> I probably didn't read the iosrv and hubfs stuff well enough, but
> multi-pipes are not like gnu screen--unless hubfs and/or iosrv can
> do barriers and reduces and I just missed that part?

The connection to screen is really only in usage.  Iosrv and Hubfs
were the result of trying to give myself persistent rc shells in Plan
9.  Because of the absence of the TTY layer, it seemed like the thing
to do was to buffer and multiplex each file descriptor of a shell, and
allow multiple clients to connect to those buffers.

Even though this architecture was created for keeping persistent rc
shells around, I realized that it was actually a very beautiful
general purpose extension of the original unix pipes, and could be
used for a large number of purposes, including cluster processing type
applications.

So the connection to screen is not "technical" at all - just that the
main purpose I wrote iosrv/hubfs for (and btw hubfs is vastly superior
to iosrv for practical use if anyone is interested) was to keep
persistent rc shells around on remote machines for analogous usage to
screen.

Anyway, I think multipipes/hubs/pipemuxers are just a good idea for
Plan 9 (and probably standard unixes too) and that they fit
beautifully with 9P and the whole system.  I'd like to move forward
with trying to make good Plan 9 software and not have this particular
little patent kerfuffle turn into anything majorly disruptive.

Ben Kidwell
"mycroftiv"

-Who would rather go back to trying to explain ANTS and hoping
that other Plan 9 users would take an interest and explore it.