[9fans] silly suggestions

[9fans] silly suggestions

[lucio]

Anyone want to beat me to the implementation of the following, or
point out why they should not be implemented?

1.  Use "#" rather than "_" in the renaming of files by "replica" so
that one can clean up without regard for legitimate files starting in
an underscore.

2.  Change Mail so that (a) the vertical bar is followed immediately
by the "fmt" command, saving a little tag line real estate (yes, it
does work) in the "mail" windows and (b) the "Undo" command is a
little more common in "Mail" taglines than is presently the case.

3.  (I won't get to this in any hurry) Teach ACME Mail (a) to use
templates for new messages and (b) to "group" quote.

++L

Re: [9fans] silly suggestions

[geoff]

'#' at the start of a file name implies a device file, so it's a poor
choice to replace '_'.  I believe that replica only renames an old
file to _file if it's in a known directory of executables (e.g.,
/386/bin, /rc/bin, /acme), so the _file names shouldn't be a big
problem.  As far as I know, no actual executable's name starts with
'_', so it's safe to remove /386/bin/_*, for example.

Re: [9fans] silly suggestions

[boyd, rounin]

> As far as I know, no actual executable's name starts with
> '_', so it's safe to remove /386/bin/_*, for example.

what about various unused services in?

    /bin/service
    /bin/service/auth

--
MGRS 31U DQ 52572 12604

Re: [9fans] silly suggestions

[geoff]

Yup, /rc/bin is different.  But I can only remember a few changes to
/rc/bin/service* via replica, thus relatively few times that one has
had to sort out the changes.

Re: [9fans] silly suggestions

[lucio]

> '#' at the start of a file name implies a device file, so it's a poor
> choice to replace '_'.  I believe that replica only renames an old
> file to _file if it's in a known directory of executables (e.g.,
> /386/bin, /rc/bin, /acme), so the _file names shouldn't be a big
> problem.  As far as I know, no actual executable's name starts with
> '_', so it's safe to remove /386/bin/_*, for example.

If that is true, then one could easily duplicate the functionality in
a script that tidies up after replica.  Can anyone suggest such a
script and will it be totally safe?

++L

Re: [9fans] silly suggestions

[Russ Cox]

> If that is true, then one could easily duplicate the functionality in
> a script that tidies up after replica.  Can anyone suggest such a
> script and will it be totally safe?

if you rm /*/bin/_* /*/bin/*/_* at boot time 
in termrc or your file server's cpurc
(*not* the one that cpu servers booting from the file server run)
then that is safe.

it's not safe to remove them immediately after pull.
the whole point of the rename is so that if (say) you
have acme running and you download a new acme,
then if the demand loading tries to get a page of the
acme binary, it gets the one you were running and not
the new one, which may not match what is already loaded.

russ

Re: [9fans] silly suggestions

[Russ Cox]

> Anyone want to beat me to the implementation of the following, or
> point out why they should not be implemented?
>
> 1.  Use "#" rather than "_" in the renaming of files by "replica" so
> that one can clean up without regard for legitimate files starting in
> an underscore.

_ is what mk safeinstall uses too.  it's the right thing.
if you have legitimate files starting with an underscore
you should rename them.

i hadn't noticed the double-meaning of _ in /rc/bin/service.
i've renamed those to !.

> 2.  Change Mail so that (a) the vertical bar is followed immediately
> by the "fmt" command, saving a little tag line real estate (yes, it
> does work) in the "mail" windows and (b) the "Undo" command is a
> little more common in "Mail" taglines than is presently the case.

Done.

> 3.  (I won't get to this in any hurry) Teach ACME Mail (a) to use
> templates for new messages and (b) to "group" quote.

I don't really like (a) but it would be trivial to do.
What does (b) mean?

Russ

Re: [9fans] silly suggestions

[Heiko Dudzus]

> i hadn't noticed the double-meaning of _ in /rc/bin/service.
> i've renamed those to !.

It's the same 'problem' with /rc/bin/service.auth, isn't it?

;-/

Heiko

Re: [9fans] silly suggestions

[Russ Cox]

> It's the same 'problem' with /rc/bin/service.auth, isn't it?

ls /n/sources/plan9/rc/bin/service.auth/_*

i see nothing.
russ