Re: [9fans] Re: patch/list sorry/proc-mtime

["Russ Cox" <rsc@swtch.com>]

> if we're interested in coming to consensus, i'll pipe up and say i
> really like the idea of mtime being proc start time. i've wanted this
> many times and only didn't add it because i (foolishly) assumed it'd
> be more involved than the apparently-trivial diff. being able to 'ls
> -lt /proc' is genuinely useful, and i'm curious why you'd dismiss it.
> as you say, the compile time of the kernel is useful (and not really
> confusing) as well, but is preserved in nearly every other device on
> the system.

it duplicates information already in the status file,
and it would be the *only* kernel device file in the system
that didn't use kerndate as the mtime.  when did the
plan 9 approach become "there's more than one way to do it"?

ls -t /proc is of course indistinguishable from ls | sort -n.

ls -lt /proc just gives you some dates in sorted order.
it's useless unless you somehow have the pid->process info
mapping stored in your head.

if you want to change ps(1) to *display* the start time
of a process, i think that could be genuinely useful.
putting an extra copy on the directory mtime is not.

russ