[9fans] The Case for Bind

[9fans] The Case for Bind

[Marshall Conover]

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Hi All!

   I've been exploring the Fuchsia operating system, and while they have
per-process namespaces, they don't have a utility like plan 9's bind, nor a
method of supporting it by default in their system libraries. I've made
some progress on adding it (https://imgur.com/HELWbrQ), but enthusiasm for
the concept seems lukewarm, and I'm coming to the point where I feel I'm
going to need to make a strong argument for why it should be a feature of
their per-process namespace filesystem. As someone who's neither on their
team nor an employee of google, I feel that I'm going to need to make a
damn good argument - and I'd very much like to, as it really, *really* is
something I'd like to have easily within reach in a modern OS, and it seems
like such a low-hanging fruit of a feature.

I have two scenarios currently I feel make a strong argument for the
inclusion of bind: one is running tests on an install of a product while
still being able to do development on it, by using a bind to redirect the
development dll to the install's dll in the process I'm developing in; and
the other an example of when a bind would just be convenient, such as a
certain process needing python2 instead of python3 on a system which
defaults to python 3, and have scripts that reference #/bin/python.

So, I'd like to hear the community's thoughts on other uses of bind. I
think they'd be useful both for making my case for bind, and in thinking
about my continuing implementation of the command. I also want to implement
union mounting in the future (which I can get very-close-to-being-free with
my changes for umount), but right now bind is my focus.

Thanks for your time.

Marshall

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Re: [9fans] The Case for Bind

[Kurt H Maier]

On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 02:58:02PM +0000, Marshall Conover wrote:
>
> As someone who's neither on their
> team nor an employee of google, I feel that I'm going to need to make a
> damn good argument

Suggest to them that the namespace status could be exposed to javascript
and used to enhance the accuracy of browser fingerprinting.  Alternately,
if you could come up with a way to shove ads into the output of ns,
they'd probably implement it for you.

khm

Re: [9fans] The Case for Bind

[Marshall Conover]

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khm - Unfortunately, that would conflict with the browsing model I want to
propose once I've proven my worth - in which the user emails a daemon with
the site they want, which the daemon then wgets, forwards to them, and
opens up emacs.

Thanks!

Marshall

On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 10:58 AM Marshall Conover <marzhall.o@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi All!
>
>    I've been exploring the Fuchsia operating system, and while they have
> per-process namespaces, they don't have a utility like plan 9's bind, nor a
> method of supporting it by default in their system libraries. I've made
> some progress on adding it (https://imgur.com/HELWbrQ), but enthusiasm
> for the concept seems lukewarm, and I'm coming to the point where I feel
> I'm going to need to make a strong argument for why it should be a feature
> of their per-process namespace filesystem. As someone who's neither on
> their team nor an employee of google, I feel that I'm going to need to make
> a damn good argument - and I'd very much like to, as it really, *really* is
> something I'd like to have easily within reach in a modern OS, and it seems
> like such a low-hanging fruit of a feature.
>
> I have two scenarios currently I feel make a strong argument for the
> inclusion of bind: one is running tests on an install of a product while
> still being able to do development on it, by using a bind to redirect the
> development dll to the install's dll in the process I'm developing in; and
> the other an example of when a bind would just be convenient, such as a
> certain process needing python2 instead of python3 on a system which
> defaults to python 3, and have scripts that reference #/bin/python.
>
> So, I'd like to hear the community's thoughts on other uses of bind. I
> think they'd be useful both for making my case for bind, and in thinking
> about my continuing implementation of the command. I also want to implement
> union mounting in the future (which I can get very-close-to-being-free with
> my changes for umount), but right now bind is my focus.
>
> Thanks for your time.
>
> Marshall
>

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Re: [9fans] The Case for Bind

[Kurt H Maier]

On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 07:55:21PM +0000, Marshall Conover wrote:
> khm - Unfortunately, that would conflict with the browsing model I want to
> propose once I've proven my worth - in which the user emails a daemon with
> the site they want, which the daemon then wgets, forwards to them, and
> opens up emacs.

There's no reason you can't attach the fingerprint data as part of a
MIME message part.  You're basically taking money out of Googlers'
pockets with this refusal to focus on the web.  Are you sure you can
live with yourself, this way?

Anyway, the common problem with both of your use cases is that it
focuses on making programmers' lives easier.  If you want to be taken
seriously by a Silicon Valley company, you should focus on making
users' lives harder, instead.

For instance, with bind, Google could install different versions of
application packages in parallel on unsuspecting customers' devices,
then do A/B testing to track ad engagement.  Google employees LOVE A/B
testing; this is a sure-fire pitch.

khm

Re: [9fans] The Case for Bind

[Marshall Conover]

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Hmm... I had thought of parallel installs, but A/B testing in order to
maximize ad revenue is a brilliant application.

I have also been thinking about the potential for seamless instillation and
startup of applications - updates to app can be installed in the background
to a bound /tmp directory, with that directories' location journaled;
meanwhile, the application continues running for the user. The updated
application then begins in the background - using the /tmp directory - and
loads everything the user is currently doing in the old. Then, it prompts
the user to 'restart' the application, during which it plays an ad for the
amount of time a user would usually expect a restart to take - with the
benefit of being able to use CPU-intensive eye-tracking software to watch
the user's interest in ads. The amount of time could also be A/B tested per
application. At some point when the user is not using the application, the
journaled /tmp location can be copied over to the correct install path. I'm
not quite sure how to inconvenience the user further than they normally are
with this method, however...

Thanks for all the insightful advice!

Marshall

On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 3:55 PM Marshall Conover <marzhall.o@gmail.com>
wrote:

> khm - Unfortunately, that would conflict with the browsing model I want to
> propose once I've proven my worth - in which the user emails a daemon with
> the site they want, which the daemon then wgets, forwards to them, and
> opens up emacs.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Marshall
>
> On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 10:58 AM Marshall Conover <marzhall.o@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi All!
>>
>>    I've been exploring the Fuchsia operating system, and while they have
>> per-process namespaces, they don't have a utility like plan 9's bind, nor a
>> method of supporting it by default in their system libraries. I've made
>> some progress on adding it (https://imgur.com/HELWbrQ), but enthusiasm
>> for the concept seems lukewarm, and I'm coming to the point where I feel
>> I'm going to need to make a strong argument for why it should be a feature
>> of their per-process namespace filesystem. As someone who's neither on
>> their team nor an employee of google, I feel that I'm going to need to make
>> a damn good argument - and I'd very much like to, as it really, *really* is
>> something I'd like to have easily within reach in a modern OS, and it seems
>> like such a low-hanging fruit of a feature.
>>
>> I have two scenarios currently I feel make a strong argument for the
>> inclusion of bind: one is running tests on an install of a product while
>> still being able to do development on it, by using a bind to redirect the
>> development dll to the install's dll in the process I'm developing in; and
>> the other an example of when a bind would just be convenient, such as a
>> certain process needing python2 instead of python3 on a system which
>> defaults to python 3, and have scripts that reference #/bin/python.
>>
>> So, I'd like to hear the community's thoughts on other uses of bind. I
>> think they'd be useful both for making my case for bind, and in thinking
>> about my continuing implementation of the command. I also want to implement
>> union mounting in the future (which I can get very-close-to-being-free with
>> my changes for umount), but right now bind is my focus.
>>
>> Thanks for your time.
>>
>> Marshall
>>
>

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[9fans] The Case for Bind

[Micah Stetson]

It's been years since I've used Plan 9, and I very-much miss bind and union
mount. For me, the big benefit of them is that you can hard-code well-known
names for certain files or directories, and yet you can override those
paths as needed, without having to set a bunch of environment variables and
worry about whether the program you're dealing with checks the environment
variables.

Real-world example: I maintain a commercial program that uses embedded
Python and is run on customer servers over-which I have little or no
control. I don't want my program to use the system Python libraries, if
there are any. But in order to work in many different situations, including
for testing while uninstalled, Python does a whole bunch of hunting around
the system to find its libraries. This hunt is affected by the PYTHONHOME
and PYTHONPATH environment variables, as well as code in site.py, and C
initialization code with some hard-coded paths. To work around this, I set
a flag that advises Python to ignore the environment, I overwrite the
hard-coded paths (in spite of warnings in the Python docs) before
initializing Python, and I supply my own replacement site.py. I think this
isolates my program from the system Python, but it's complicated and
there's probably some corner case I've missed.

If the OS had bind and union mounts, then Python could always look for its
libraries in /lib/python. Need a different library? bind ./lib /lib/python.
There would be no need for PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH or sys.path or the
searches in site.py and the C initialization code. I would simply bind my
own library into the well-known location, and I would never have to worry
about some bug in Python accidentally loading the system library.

Off the top of my head, bind and union mount can eliminate the need for all
of these common environment variables: PATH, MANPATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH,
PKGCONFIG, PYTHONPATH (as well as GOPATH, etc), TMPDIR, PAGER, EDITOR, and
surely others. Namespace manipulation is not just an alternative to
environment variables in cases like these; it's better because it
eliminates code. Every program that wants to support one of these
environment variables must contain code to do so. With namespace
manipulation, they don't need any code, they just open() or exec() a
well-known path. Namespace manipulation works to reconfigure any path name
for any program, without the program's author having to provide a
configuration hook of any kind.

Micah
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Re: [9fans] The Case for Bind

[Marshall Conover]

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Aleksandar -

> I have a honest feeling you will end up as roadkill with this sort of
approach.

This is my concern as well. Combined with the fact the OS only has an IRC
channel (which I'm constantly concerned I'm wearing out my welcome in) and
the tepid response so far, part of the reason I came to 9fans was help
refining my approach.

Your paragraph is apt and inspiring to me, but I'm beginning to think they
may just not be interested in outside code or approaches at this point in
time - which is rough, because now seems like the time to make a decision
like employing binds and union mounts. To put it simply, I'm not sure I
have the leverage or opening to really put forth the idea - especially
considering this is, y'know, their job, and they've got shit to do. But,
I'll try and keep in mind that I should argue not just from "here's some
places it would make things simple," but "this is how things should work.
It is detrimental to not have this feature, and not having it, in sum, will
waste millions of man-hours for the people who use this operating system,
the same way it's wasted lifetimes not being in Mac or Windows."

I don't want to give up on this, though. I honestly do believe it's the
right thing to do - and I want them to see that as well. I'm just trying to
figure out how to make the pitch that's needed, and I appreciate your help.

Micah -

thanks for your use cases. I'll keep these in mind. I had thought about
bringing up getting rid of $PATH and the others, but I wasn't sure I could
make a clean argument for why union mounting the directories was better
than just having a path. This will be a big help in allowing me to argue
that this is the 'correct' way to handle having to source information from
multiple paths, when you may or may not want any individual folder in the
current set.

Thanks again, all. I'm going to keep working on getting together a bigger
set of changes, and maybe staking my claim on a pull request. I'm not sure
there's any other way to really get an 'audience.'

Thanks!
Marshall

On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 5:40 PM Marshall Conover <marzhall.o@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hmm... I had thought of parallel installs, but A/B testing in order to
> maximize ad revenue is a brilliant application.
>
> I have also been thinking about the potential for seamless instillation
> and startup of applications - updates to app can be installed in the
> background to a bound /tmp directory, with that directories' location
> journaled; meanwhile, the application continues running for the user. The
> updated application then begins in the background - using the /tmp
> directory - and loads everything the user is currently doing in the old.
> Then, it prompts the user to 'restart' the application, during which it
> plays an ad for the amount of time a user would usually expect a restart to
> take - with the benefit of being able to use CPU-intensive eye-tracking
> software to watch the user's interest in ads. The amount of time could also
> be A/B tested per application. At some point when the user is not using the
> application, the journaled /tmp location can be copied over to the correct
> install path. I'm not quite sure how to inconvenience the user further than
> they normally are with this method, however...
>
> Thanks for all the insightful advice!
>
> Marshall
>
> On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 3:55 PM Marshall Conover <marzhall.o@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> khm - Unfortunately, that would conflict with the browsing model I want
>> to propose once I've proven my worth - in which the user emails a daemon
>> with the site they want, which the daemon then wgets, forwards to them, and
>> opens up emacs.
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> Marshall
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 10:58 AM Marshall Conover <marzhall.o@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi All!
>>>
>>>    I've been exploring the Fuchsia operating system, and while they have
>>> per-process namespaces, they don't have a utility like plan 9's bind, nor a
>>> method of supporting it by default in their system libraries. I've made
>>> some progress on adding it (https://imgur.com/HELWbrQ), but enthusiasm
>>> for the concept seems lukewarm, and I'm coming to the point where I feel
>>> I'm going to need to make a strong argument for why it should be a feature
>>> of their per-process namespace filesystem. As someone who's neither on
>>> their team nor an employee of google, I feel that I'm going to need to make
>>> a damn good argument - and I'd very much like to, as it really, *really* is
>>> something I'd like to have easily within reach in a modern OS, and it seems
>>> like such a low-hanging fruit of a feature.
>>>
>>> I have two scenarios currently I feel make a strong argument for the
>>> inclusion of bind: one is running tests on an install of a product while
>>> still being able to do development on it, by using a bind to redirect the
>>> development dll to the install's dll in the process I'm developing in; and
>>> the other an example of when a bind would just be convenient, such as a
>>> certain process needing python2 instead of python3 on a system which
>>> defaults to python 3, and have scripts that reference #/bin/python.
>>>
>>> So, I'd like to hear the community's thoughts on other uses of bind. I
>>> think they'd be useful both for making my case for bind, and in thinking
>>> about my continuing implementation of the command. I also want to implement
>>> union mounting in the future (which I can get very-close-to-being-free with
>>> my changes for umount), but right now bind is my focus.
>>>
>>> Thanks for your time.
>>>
>>> Marshall
>>>
>>

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Re: [9fans] The Case for Bind

[Devon H. O'Dell]

Note that Fuschia is a microkernel. Does it provide a filesystem
interface? It's possible this wouldn't be adopted simply because it's
not in scope for the core system, and it's something that a system
module could implement without requiring maintenance.

--dho

2017-09-14 17:53 GMT-07:00 Marshall Conover <marzhall.o@gmail.com>:
> Aleksandar -
>
>> I have a honest feeling you will end up as roadkill with this sort of
>> approach.
>
> This is my concern as well. Combined with the fact the OS only has an IRC
> channel (which I'm constantly concerned I'm wearing out my welcome in) and
> the tepid response so far, part of the reason I came to 9fans was help
> refining my approach.
>
> Your paragraph is apt and inspiring to me, but I'm beginning to think they
> may just not be interested in outside code or approaches at this point in
> time - which is rough, because now seems like the time to make a decision
> like employing binds and union mounts. To put it simply, I'm not sure I have
> the leverage or opening to really put forth the idea - especially
> considering this is, y'know, their job, and they've got shit to do. But,
> I'll try and keep in mind that I should argue not just from "here's some
> places it would make things simple," but "this is how things should work. It
> is detrimental to not have this feature, and not having it, in sum, will
> waste millions of man-hours for the people who use this operating system,
> the same way it's wasted lifetimes not being in Mac or Windows."
>
> I don't want to give up on this, though. I honestly do believe it's the
> right thing to do - and I want them to see that as well. I'm just trying to
> figure out how to make the pitch that's needed, and I appreciate your help.
>
> Micah -
>
> thanks for your use cases. I'll keep these in mind. I had thought about
> bringing up getting rid of $PATH and the others, but I wasn't sure I could
> make a clean argument for why union mounting the directories was better than
> just having a path. This will be a big help in allowing me to argue that
> this is the 'correct' way to handle having to source information from
> multiple paths, when you may or may not want any individual folder in the
> current set.
>
> Thanks again, all. I'm going to keep working on getting together a bigger
> set of changes, and maybe staking my claim on a pull request. I'm not sure
> there's any other way to really get an 'audience.'
>
> Thanks!
> Marshall
>
> On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 5:40 PM Marshall Conover <marzhall.o@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Hmm... I had thought of parallel installs, but A/B testing in order to
>> maximize ad revenue is a brilliant application.
>>
>> I have also been thinking about the potential for seamless instillation
>> and startup of applications - updates to app can be installed in the
>> background to a bound /tmp directory, with that directories' location
>> journaled; meanwhile, the application continues running for the user. The
>> updated application then begins in the background - using the /tmp directory
>> - and loads everything the user is currently doing in the old. Then, it
>> prompts the user to 'restart' the application, during which it plays an ad
>> for the amount of time a user would usually expect a restart to take - with
>> the benefit of being able to use CPU-intensive eye-tracking software to
>> watch the user's interest in ads. The amount of time could also be A/B
>> tested per application. At some point when the user is not using the
>> application, the journaled /tmp location can be copied over to the correct
>> install path. I'm not quite sure how to inconvenience the user further than
>> they normally are with this method, however...
>>
>> Thanks for all the insightful advice!
>>
>> Marshall
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 3:55 PM Marshall Conover <marzhall.o@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> khm - Unfortunately, that would conflict with the browsing model I want
>>> to propose once I've proven my worth - in which the user emails a daemon
>>> with the site they want, which the daemon then wgets, forwards to them, and
>>> opens up emacs.
>>>
>>> Thanks!
>>>
>>> Marshall
>>>
>>> On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 10:58 AM Marshall Conover <marzhall.o@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi All!
>>>>
>>>>    I've been exploring the Fuchsia operating system, and while they have
>>>> per-process namespaces, they don't have a utility like plan 9's bind, nor a
>>>> method of supporting it by default in their system libraries. I've made some
>>>> progress on adding it (https://imgur.com/HELWbrQ), but enthusiasm for the
>>>> concept seems lukewarm, and I'm coming to the point where I feel I'm going
>>>> to need to make a strong argument for why it should be a feature of their
>>>> per-process namespace filesystem. As someone who's neither on their team nor
>>>> an employee of google, I feel that I'm going to need to make a damn good
>>>> argument - and I'd very much like to, as it really, *really* is something
>>>> I'd like to have easily within reach in a modern OS, and it seems like such
>>>> a low-hanging fruit of a feature.
>>>>
>>>> I have two scenarios currently I feel make a strong argument for the
>>>> inclusion of bind: one is running tests on an install of a product while
>>>> still being able to do development on it, by using a bind to redirect the
>>>> development dll to the install's dll in the process I'm developing in; and
>>>> the other an example of when a bind would just be convenient, such as a
>>>> certain process needing python2 instead of python3 on a system which
>>>> defaults to python 3, and have scripts that reference #/bin/python.
>>>>
>>>> So, I'd like to hear the community's thoughts on other uses of bind. I
>>>> think they'd be useful both for making my case for bind, and in thinking
>>>> about my continuing implementation of the command. I also want to implement
>>>> union mounting in the future (which I can get very-close-to-being-free with
>>>> my changes for umount), but right now bind is my focus.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for your time.
>>>>
>>>> Marshall

Re: [9fans] The Case for Bind

[Marshall Conover]

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> Note that Fuschia is a microkernel. Does it provide a filesystem
interface?

Hi dho! Yes, it does, and the code I've modified to introduce the ability
to perform bind is a modification of the rudimentary binding their
interface already provided (top-level directory binds only, previously,
with any bind attempting to go more than one directory deep breaking
things), which they had implemented only as a method of testing a few
namespace features. The code changes are pretty much entirely in the
kernel, and are pretty small.

That said, taking the long view, my current approach only extended their
current method - I'm thinking I may have to instead change some more
fundamental things in order to get union mounts working, such as creating a
per-namespace unions directory that holds the file descriptors for
namespace union filesystem nodes point to - which is what I'd like their
input on. I have noticed, though, that in their github repo (previously I
had been grabbing straight from the google repo), they have a README that
says they're not currently accepting more than bug changes, which might
partially explain the majority radio silence. While that decision hasn't
been mentioned directly in response to me on IRC, I'm thinking I may just
have to maintain a branch until it's exclusively opened up for more
substantial user contributions, whenever that is. :/

Thanks!

Marshall

On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 8:53 PM Marshall Conover <marzhall.o@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Aleksandar -
>
> > I have a honest feeling you will end up as roadkill with this sort of
> approach.
>
> This is my concern as well. Combined with the fact the OS only has an IRC
> channel (which I'm constantly concerned I'm wearing out my welcome in) and
> the tepid response so far, part of the reason I came to 9fans was help
> refining my approach.
>
> Your paragraph is apt and inspiring to me, but I'm beginning to think they
> may just not be interested in outside code or approaches at this point in
> time - which is rough, because now seems like the time to make a decision
> like employing binds and union mounts. To put it simply, I'm not sure I
> have the leverage or opening to really put forth the idea - especially
> considering this is, y'know, their job, and they've got shit to do. But,
> I'll try and keep in mind that I should argue not just from "here's some
> places it would make things simple," but "this is how things should work.
> It is detrimental to not have this feature, and not having it, in sum, will
> waste millions of man-hours for the people who use this operating system,
> the same way it's wasted lifetimes not being in Mac or Windows."
>
> I don't want to give up on this, though. I honestly do believe it's the
> right thing to do - and I want them to see that as well. I'm just trying to
> figure out how to make the pitch that's needed, and I appreciate your help.
>
> Micah -
>
> thanks for your use cases. I'll keep these in mind. I had thought about
> bringing up getting rid of $PATH and the others, but I wasn't sure I could
> make a clean argument for why union mounting the directories was better
> than just having a path. This will be a big help in allowing me to argue
> that this is the 'correct' way to handle having to source information from
> multiple paths, when you may or may not want any individual folder in the
> current set.
>
> Thanks again, all. I'm going to keep working on getting together a bigger
> set of changes, and maybe staking my claim on a pull request. I'm not sure
> there's any other way to really get an 'audience.'
>
> Thanks!
> Marshall
>
> On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 5:40 PM Marshall Conover <marzhall.o@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hmm... I had thought of parallel installs, but A/B testing in order to
>> maximize ad revenue is a brilliant application.
>>
>> I have also been thinking about the potential for seamless instillation
>> and startup of applications - updates to app can be installed in the
>> background to a bound /tmp directory, with that directories' location
>> journaled; meanwhile, the application continues running for the user. The
>> updated application then begins in the background - using the /tmp
>> directory - and loads everything the user is currently doing in the old.
>> Then, it prompts the user to 'restart' the application, during which it
>> plays an ad for the amount of time a user would usually expect a restart to
>> take - with the benefit of being able to use CPU-intensive eye-tracking
>> software to watch the user's interest in ads. The amount of time could also
>> be A/B tested per application. At some point when the user is not using the
>> application, the journaled /tmp location can be copied over to the correct
>> install path. I'm not quite sure how to inconvenience the user further than
>> they normally are with this method, however...
>>
>> Thanks for all the insightful advice!
>>
>> Marshall
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 3:55 PM Marshall Conover <marzhall.o@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> khm - Unfortunately, that would conflict with the browsing model I want
>>> to propose once I've proven my worth - in which the user emails a daemon
>>> with the site they want, which the daemon then wgets, forwards to them, and
>>> opens up emacs.
>>>
>>> Thanks!
>>>
>>> Marshall
>>>
>>> On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 10:58 AM Marshall Conover <marzhall.o@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi All!
>>>>
>>>>    I've been exploring the Fuchsia operating system, and while they
>>>> have per-process namespaces, they don't have a utility like plan 9's bind,
>>>> nor a method of supporting it by default in their system libraries. I've
>>>> made some progress on adding it (https://imgur.com/HELWbrQ), but
>>>> enthusiasm for the concept seems lukewarm, and I'm coming to the point
>>>> where I feel I'm going to need to make a strong argument for why it should
>>>> be a feature of their per-process namespace filesystem. As someone who's
>>>> neither on their team nor an employee of google, I feel that I'm going to
>>>> need to make a damn good argument - and I'd very much like to, as it
>>>> really, *really* is something I'd like to have easily within reach in a
>>>> modern OS, and it seems like such a low-hanging fruit of a feature.
>>>>
>>>> I have two scenarios currently I feel make a strong argument for the
>>>> inclusion of bind: one is running tests on an install of a product while
>>>> still being able to do development on it, by using a bind to redirect the
>>>> development dll to the install's dll in the process I'm developing in; and
>>>> the other an example of when a bind would just be convenient, such as a
>>>> certain process needing python2 instead of python3 on a system which
>>>> defaults to python 3, and have scripts that reference #/bin/python.
>>>>
>>>> So, I'd like to hear the community's thoughts on other uses of bind. I
>>>> think they'd be useful both for making my case for bind, and in thinking
>>>> about my continuing implementation of the command. I also want to implement
>>>> union mounting in the future (which I can get very-close-to-being-free with
>>>> my changes for umount), but right now bind is my focus.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for your time.
>>>>
>>>> Marshall
>>>>
>>>

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Re: [9fans] The Case for Bind

[Marshall Conover]

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> But you are not your contributions, and since you freely agreed to donate
your time for free, they don't owe you anything.

Yeah, I've gone into this fully knowing they have no obligation to respond
- and to be honest, even if I were a team member, they'd still have no
obligation; I'm not leadership. That's why I've been trying to figure out a
compelling reason, but I think you have it right with:

> If you want to contribute to Fuchsia (or any similarly leaded project),
start by writing tests, reviewing code, fixing small bugs, implementing the
interfaces they designed and so on... they will thanks you a lot for your
free and (really) useful work.

I'll start digging in to see what I can do. I think I jumped the gun by
trying to contribute a feature, and you're right that they're bound to
appreciate bug fixes, test implementations, etc.

Thanks for the help.

Marshall

On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 10:01 PM Marshall Conover <marzhall.o@gmail.com>
wrote:

> > Note that Fuschia is a microkernel. Does it provide a filesystem
> interface?
>
> Hi dho! Yes, it does, and the code I've modified to introduce the ability
> to perform bind is a modification of the rudimentary binding their
> interface already provided (top-level directory binds only, previously,
> with any bind attempting to go more than one directory deep breaking
> things), which they had implemented only as a method of testing a few
> namespace features. The code changes are pretty much entirely in the
> kernel, and are pretty small.
>
> That said, taking the long view, my current approach only extended their
> current method - I'm thinking I may have to instead change some more
> fundamental things in order to get union mounts working, such as creating a
> per-namespace unions directory that holds the file descriptors for
> namespace union filesystem nodes point to - which is what I'd like their
> input on. I have noticed, though, that in their github repo (previously I
> had been grabbing straight from the google repo), they have a README that
> says they're not currently accepting more than bug changes, which might
> partially explain the majority radio silence. While that decision hasn't
> been mentioned directly in response to me on IRC, I'm thinking I may just
> have to maintain a branch until it's exclusively opened up for more
> substantial user contributions, whenever that is. :/
>
> Thanks!
>
> Marshall
>
> On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 8:53 PM Marshall Conover <marzhall.o@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Aleksandar -
>>
>> > I have a honest feeling you will end up as roadkill with this sort of
>> approach.
>>
>> This is my concern as well. Combined with the fact the OS only has an IRC
>> channel (which I'm constantly concerned I'm wearing out my welcome in) and
>> the tepid response so far, part of the reason I came to 9fans was help
>> refining my approach.
>>
>> Your paragraph is apt and inspiring to me, but I'm beginning to think
>> they may just not be interested in outside code or approaches at this point
>> in time - which is rough, because now seems like the time to make a
>> decision like employing binds and union mounts. To put it simply, I'm not
>> sure I have the leverage or opening to really put forth the idea -
>> especially considering this is, y'know, their job, and they've got shit to
>> do. But, I'll try and keep in mind that I should argue not just from
>> "here's some places it would make things simple," but "this is how things
>> should work. It is detrimental to not have this feature, and not having it,
>> in sum, will waste millions of man-hours for the people who use this
>> operating system, the same way it's wasted lifetimes not being in Mac or
>> Windows."
>>
>> I don't want to give up on this, though. I honestly do believe it's the
>> right thing to do - and I want them to see that as well. I'm just trying to
>> figure out how to make the pitch that's needed, and I appreciate your help.
>>
>> Micah -
>>
>> thanks for your use cases. I'll keep these in mind. I had thought about
>> bringing up getting rid of $PATH and the others, but I wasn't sure I could
>> make a clean argument for why union mounting the directories was better
>> than just having a path. This will be a big help in allowing me to argue
>> that this is the 'correct' way to handle having to source information from
>> multiple paths, when you may or may not want any individual folder in the
>> current set.
>>
>> Thanks again, all. I'm going to keep working on getting together a bigger
>> set of changes, and maybe staking my claim on a pull request. I'm not sure
>> there's any other way to really get an 'audience.'
>>
>> Thanks!
>> Marshall
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 5:40 PM Marshall Conover <marzhall.o@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Hmm... I had thought of parallel installs, but A/B testing in order to
>>> maximize ad revenue is a brilliant application.
>>>
>>> I have also been thinking about the potential for seamless instillation
>>> and startup of applications - updates to app can be installed in the
>>> background to a bound /tmp directory, with that directories' location
>>> journaled; meanwhile, the application continues running for the user. The
>>> updated application then begins in the background - using the /tmp
>>> directory - and loads everything the user is currently doing in the old.
>>> Then, it prompts the user to 'restart' the application, during which it
>>> plays an ad for the amount of time a user would usually expect a restart to
>>> take - with the benefit of being able to use CPU-intensive eye-tracking
>>> software to watch the user's interest in ads. The amount of time could also
>>> be A/B tested per application. At some point when the user is not using the
>>> application, the journaled /tmp location can be copied over to the correct
>>> install path. I'm not quite sure how to inconvenience the user further than
>>> they normally are with this method, however...
>>>
>>> Thanks for all the insightful advice!
>>>
>>> Marshall
>>>
>>> On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 3:55 PM Marshall Conover <marzhall.o@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> khm - Unfortunately, that would conflict with the browsing model I want
>>>> to propose once I've proven my worth - in which the user emails a daemon
>>>> with the site they want, which the daemon then wgets, forwards to them, and
>>>> opens up emacs.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks!
>>>>
>>>> Marshall
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 10:58 AM Marshall Conover <marzhall.o@gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hi All!
>>>>>
>>>>>    I've been exploring the Fuchsia operating system, and while they
>>>>> have per-process namespaces, they don't have a utility like plan 9's bind,
>>>>> nor a method of supporting it by default in their system libraries. I've
>>>>> made some progress on adding it (https://imgur.com/HELWbrQ), but
>>>>> enthusiasm for the concept seems lukewarm, and I'm coming to the point
>>>>> where I feel I'm going to need to make a strong argument for why it should
>>>>> be a feature of their per-process namespace filesystem. As someone who's
>>>>> neither on their team nor an employee of google, I feel that I'm going to
>>>>> need to make a damn good argument - and I'd very much like to, as it
>>>>> really, *really* is something I'd like to have easily within reach in a
>>>>> modern OS, and it seems like such a low-hanging fruit of a feature.
>>>>>
>>>>> I have two scenarios currently I feel make a strong argument for the
>>>>> inclusion of bind: one is running tests on an install of a product while
>>>>> still being able to do development on it, by using a bind to redirect the
>>>>> development dll to the install's dll in the process I'm developing in; and
>>>>> the other an example of when a bind would just be convenient, such as a
>>>>> certain process needing python2 instead of python3 on a system which
>>>>> defaults to python 3, and have scripts that reference #/bin/python.
>>>>>
>>>>> So, I'd like to hear the community's thoughts on other uses of bind. I
>>>>> think they'd be useful both for making my case for bind, and in thinking
>>>>> about my continuing implementation of the command. I also want to implement
>>>>> union mounting in the future (which I can get very-close-to-being-free with
>>>>> my changes for umount), but right now bind is my focus.
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks for your time.
>>>>>
>>>>> Marshall
>>>>>
>>>>

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Re: [9fans] The Case for Bind

[Marshall Conover]

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BLS - thanks for the wise words. What you've said has inspired me to
consider moving my efforts into user-space, and trying to create the entire
environment I want instead of just a piece of that environment, so that I
can achieve the simplicity you describe - instead of mixing approaches with
the environment the fuchsia developers currently plan.

Giacomo - While thinking on your advice, I realized most of what I've done
so far is just a fix for a bug in their current exposed version of the
'bind' command. If I submit that fix and some tests for it, I should be
able to then create union mounts and full-featured binds myself, in
user-space, by creating an additional fileserver that is able to return
merged directory entries from multiple sources, creating an entry in that
fileserver when the user asks to bind or union mount directories or files,
and binding the paths in the fuchsia namespace to the entries in that
fileserver. It'll still be a bit clunky due to their restriction of
processes being unable to modify their own namespace - so, I'll have to
start a new process for the desired bind/mount operations to apply - but in
the mean time, it'll be better than nothing (and I may just keep a parallel
branch with the four-line hack I fudged together that removes that
restriction). And in the mean time, I'll be looking for things to
contribute to fuchsia unrelated to that pursuit.

Thanks again, all. I appreciate you all taking a moment to help straighten
this dunce out. :)

(even you, khm)

Marshall

On Fri, Sep 15, 2017 at 7:59 AM Marshall Conover <marzhall.o@gmail.com>
wrote:

> > But you are not your contributions, and since you freely agreed to
> donate your time for free, they don't owe you anything.
>
> Yeah, I've gone into this fully knowing they have no obligation to respond
> - and to be honest, even if I were a team member, they'd still have no
> obligation; I'm not leadership. That's why I've been trying to figure out a
> compelling reason, but I think you have it right with:
>
> > If you want to contribute to Fuchsia (or any similarly leaded project),
> start by writing tests, reviewing code, fixing small bugs, implementing the
> interfaces they designed and so on... they will thanks you a lot for your
> free and (really) useful work.
>
> I'll start digging in to see what I can do. I think I jumped the gun by
> trying to contribute a feature, and you're right that they're bound to
> appreciate bug fixes, test implementations, etc.
>
> Thanks for the help.
>
> Marshall
>
> On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 10:01 PM Marshall Conover <marzhall.o@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> > Note that Fuschia is a microkernel. Does it provide a filesystem
>> interface?
>>
>> Hi dho! Yes, it does, and the code I've modified to introduce the ability
>> to perform bind is a modification of the rudimentary binding their
>> interface already provided (top-level directory binds only, previously,
>> with any bind attempting to go more than one directory deep breaking
>> things), which they had implemented only as a method of testing a few
>> namespace features. The code changes are pretty much entirely in the
>> kernel, and are pretty small.
>>
>> That said, taking the long view, my current approach only extended their
>> current method - I'm thinking I may have to instead change some more
>> fundamental things in order to get union mounts working, such as creating a
>> per-namespace unions directory that holds the file descriptors for
>> namespace union filesystem nodes point to - which is what I'd like their
>> input on. I have noticed, though, that in their github repo (previously I
>> had been grabbing straight from the google repo), they have a README that
>> says they're not currently accepting more than bug changes, which might
>> partially explain the majority radio silence. While that decision hasn't
>> been mentioned directly in response to me on IRC, I'm thinking I may just
>> have to maintain a branch until it's exclusively opened up for more
>> substantial user contributions, whenever that is. :/
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> Marshall
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 8:53 PM Marshall Conover <marzhall.o@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Aleksandar -
>>>
>>> > I have a honest feeling you will end up as roadkill with this sort of
>>> approach.
>>>
>>> This is my concern as well. Combined with the fact the OS only has an
>>> IRC channel (which I'm constantly concerned I'm wearing out my welcome in)
>>> and the tepid response so far, part of the reason I came to 9fans was help
>>> refining my approach.
>>>
>>> Your paragraph is apt and inspiring to me, but I'm beginning to think
>>> they may just not be interested in outside code or approaches at this point
>>> in time - which is rough, because now seems like the time to make a
>>> decision like employing binds and union mounts. To put it simply, I'm not
>>> sure I have the leverage or opening to really put forth the idea -
>>> especially considering this is, y'know, their job, and they've got shit to
>>> do. But, I'll try and keep in mind that I should argue not just from
>>> "here's some places it would make things simple," but "this is how things
>>> should work. It is detrimental to not have this feature, and not having it,
>>> in sum, will waste millions of man-hours for the people who use this
>>> operating system, the same way it's wasted lifetimes not being in Mac or
>>> Windows."
>>>
>>> I don't want to give up on this, though. I honestly do believe it's the
>>> right thing to do - and I want them to see that as well. I'm just trying to
>>> figure out how to make the pitch that's needed, and I appreciate your help.
>>>
>>> Micah -
>>>
>>> thanks for your use cases. I'll keep these in mind. I had thought about
>>> bringing up getting rid of $PATH and the others, but I wasn't sure I could
>>> make a clean argument for why union mounting the directories was better
>>> than just having a path. This will be a big help in allowing me to argue
>>> that this is the 'correct' way to handle having to source information from
>>> multiple paths, when you may or may not want any individual folder in the
>>> current set.
>>>
>>> Thanks again, all. I'm going to keep working on getting together a
>>> bigger set of changes, and maybe staking my claim on a pull request. I'm
>>> not sure there's any other way to really get an 'audience.'
>>>
>>> Thanks!
>>> Marshall
>>>
>>> On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 5:40 PM Marshall Conover <marzhall.o@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hmm... I had thought of parallel installs, but A/B testing in order to
>>>> maximize ad revenue is a brilliant application.
>>>>
>>>> I have also been thinking about the potential for seamless instillation
>>>> and startup of applications - updates to app can be installed in the
>>>> background to a bound /tmp directory, with that directories' location
>>>> journaled; meanwhile, the application continues running for the user. The
>>>> updated application then begins in the background - using the /tmp
>>>> directory - and loads everything the user is currently doing in the old.
>>>> Then, it prompts the user to 'restart' the application, during which it
>>>> plays an ad for the amount of time a user would usually expect a restart to
>>>> take - with the benefit of being able to use CPU-intensive eye-tracking
>>>> software to watch the user's interest in ads. The amount of time could also
>>>> be A/B tested per application. At some point when the user is not using the
>>>> application, the journaled /tmp location can be copied over to the correct
>>>> install path. I'm not quite sure how to inconvenience the user further than
>>>> they normally are with this method, however...
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for all the insightful advice!
>>>>
>>>> Marshall
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 3:55 PM Marshall Conover <marzhall.o@gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> khm - Unfortunately, that would conflict with the browsing model I
>>>>> want to propose once I've proven my worth - in which the user emails a
>>>>> daemon with the site they want, which the daemon then wgets, forwards to
>>>>> them, and opens up emacs.
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks!
>>>>>
>>>>> Marshall
>>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 10:58 AM Marshall Conover <
>>>>> marzhall.o@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Hi All!
>>>>>>
>>>>>>    I've been exploring the Fuchsia operating system, and while they
>>>>>> have per-process namespaces, they don't have a utility like plan 9's bind,
>>>>>> nor a method of supporting it by default in their system libraries. I've
>>>>>> made some progress on adding it (https://imgur.com/HELWbrQ), but
>>>>>> enthusiasm for the concept seems lukewarm, and I'm coming to the point
>>>>>> where I feel I'm going to need to make a strong argument for why it should
>>>>>> be a feature of their per-process namespace filesystem. As someone who's
>>>>>> neither on their team nor an employee of google, I feel that I'm going to
>>>>>> need to make a damn good argument - and I'd very much like to, as it
>>>>>> really, *really* is something I'd like to have easily within reach in a
>>>>>> modern OS, and it seems like such a low-hanging fruit of a feature.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I have two scenarios currently I feel make a strong argument for the
>>>>>> inclusion of bind: one is running tests on an install of a product while
>>>>>> still being able to do development on it, by using a bind to redirect the
>>>>>> development dll to the install's dll in the process I'm developing in; and
>>>>>> the other an example of when a bind would just be convenient, such as a
>>>>>> certain process needing python2 instead of python3 on a system which
>>>>>> defaults to python 3, and have scripts that reference #/bin/python.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> So, I'd like to hear the community's thoughts on other uses of bind.
>>>>>> I think they'd be useful both for making my case for bind, and in thinking
>>>>>> about my continuing implementation of the command. I also want to implement
>>>>>> union mounting in the future (which I can get very-close-to-being-free with
>>>>>> my changes for umount), but right now bind is my focus.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Thanks for your time.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Marshall
>>>>>>
>>>>>

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[9fans] The Case for Bind

[Giacomo Tesio]

2017-09-17 23:06 GMT+02:00 Marshall Conover <marzhall.o at gmail.com>:

> Giacomo - While thinking on your advice, I realized most of what I've done
> so far is just a fix for a bug in their current exposed version of the
> 'bind' command.
>

Just read carefully
https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/zircon/+/HEAD/docs/contributing.md

As of today, it states clearly:

we're *not* seeking major changes or new features from new contributors,
> however, if you desire to contribute
> <https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/docs/+/master/CONTRIBUTING.md>, *small*
> bugfixes are welcome.
>

NOT and SMALL are the key words here.

In other words

This project is not open, despite the pool of permissive licenses.
> Oh... well yes, you can fork it if you want... feel free to do so!
>
We like competition! (should we remind you that we have the best engineers
> on the market? Please compete with us!)
>


I don't want to put you down, but I've seen this happen several times at
several open source projects leaded by large companies.

Nevertheless, good luck!


Giacomo
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Re: [9fans] The Case for Bind

[Marshall Conover]

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Thanks, Giacomo. I have no illusions of being the smartest person in the
room or anything above mediocre, but I think there's a good chance the
people at Bell Labs were in that category. Hopefully, if I try to follow
their design ideas, I can at least play at being smart for a bit. And, if I
do as much as possible in user-space, Google's lack of openness hopefully
won't be too great an obstacle. This is the first thing I've been excited
about in a long time, I'm going to at least take a shot, even if working
hard at something doesn't necessarily mean it'll pan out.

(Besides, I already have a name for the project in my head: "gihnurshk." It
stands for "It's pronounced 'nurshk'.")

Thanks!
Marshall

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[9fans] The Case for Bind

[Giacomo Tesio]

2017-09-14 16:58 GMT+02:00 Marshall Conover <marzhall.o at gmail.com>:

> ...but enthusiasm for the concept seems lukewarm, and I'm coming to the
> point where I feel I'm going to need to make a strong argument for...
>

2017-09-15 2:53 GMT+02:00 Marshall Conover <marzhall.o at gmail.com>:

> It is detrimental to not have this feature, and not having it, in sum,
> will waste millions of man-hours for the people who use this operating
> system, the same way it's wasted lifetimes not being in Mac or Windows.
>

IMHO, there is a wise suggestion hidden in khm jokes.

It's pretty naive to think that contributing to open source projects leaded
by a large company (even just informally, by its employees) you can pursue
these kind of values.

Your contributions might be welcomed for a while, if they align with their
current objectives.
But you are not your contributions, and since you freely agreed to donate
your time for free, they don't owe you anything.

As long as they lead the project, the choice of open source license is just
marketing: there's neither openness nor freedom there.


Think about this for a while: if Google (or Microsoft, or...) would care
about wasted man-hours (or wasted gigawatts) do you think they would have
turned HTML browsers to what they are now?


If you want to contribute to Fuchsia (or any similarly leaded project),
start by writing tests, reviewing code, fixing small bugs, implementing the
interfaces they designed and so on... they will thanks you a lot for your
free and (really) useful work.
And as long as you align with their purposes they will threat you as a peer.

It's not that those developers are evil but there's a large amount of
politics inside these companies they have to cope with.
And ultimately, the companies that pay them are not pursuing values, just
long term profits.


Giacomo
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Re: [9fans] The Case for Bind

[Aleksandar Kuktin]

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>On Thu, 14 Sep 2017 14:58:02 +0000
>Marshall Conover <marzhall.o@gmail.com> wrote:

> I have two scenarios currently I feel make a strong argument for the
> inclusion of bind: one is running tests on an install of a product
> while still being able to do development on it, by using a bind to
> redirect the development dll to the install's dll in the process I'm
> developing in; and the other an example of when a bind would just be
> convenient, such as a certain process needing python2 instead of
> python3 on a system which defaults to python 3, and have scripts that
> reference #/bin/python.

I have a honest feeling you will end up as roadkill with this sort of
approach.

You are discussing individual specific use cases; accepting your
argument relies on the other party being imaginative enough to
independently see the value of the proposal. Generally speaking, if the
person has not already seen the value of an idea, they are probably not
going to have an epiphany after you throw them some examples.

Instead, try discussing the correctness of the premise, and how it is
steeped in fundamental value. Try: "The ability to binding filesystem
elements between different paths of a filesystem is of critical
importance to the operating system flexibility and usability. While
many current users, brought up on Windows, may lack the vision of the
features usability, with the continued refinement of public expertise
in all matters IT, there will mature the opinion that binding is a
right-of-entry feature, with operating systems lacking it being
summarily dismissed."

There. If they don't buy that, then their vision is flawed, the project
mistargeted and governance found lacking. And they will fail. You don't
want to waste your time and energy on a doomed project.

-- 
Svi moji e-mailovi su kriptografski potpisani. Proverite ih.
All of my e-mails are cryptographically signed. Verify them.
--
You don't need an AI for a robot uprising.
Humans will do just fine.
--

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Re: [9fans] The Case for Bind

[Brian L. Stuart]

On Fri, 9/15/17, Marshall Conover <marzhall.o@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'll start digging in to see what I can do. I think I jumped the
> gun by trying to contribute a feature, ...

On this point, I'd suggest a slight shift of perspective.  This is something
that I've tried to convey both to collegues when in industry and to
students when teaching.  Don't think in terms of implementing features.
Think instead of implementing mechanisms.  The mindset where every
feature is implemented with its own mechanisms is the reason so much
software is so poorly engineered.  Witness the browsers mentioned
earlier.  Good engineering involves designing and selecting a good
set of simple mechanisms that when used in various combinations
provide a rich set of features.  If a mechanism doesn't fit, don't include
it.  Remember that perfection is achieved not when there's nothing
left to add, but when there's nothing left to remove.

Bringing this back to bind, I wouldn't think of bind itself as a feature.
However, when the bind mechanism is used in conjunction with the
union directory mechanism and the architecture environment variable,
the feature of sane multi-architecture binary handling emerges.  No
where in the source of the shell or the kernel or anywhere else is
there code specifically designated to make it possible to run the
correct binary based on the architecture.  Of course, there are
other ways of accomplishing this feature, such as a path variable,
but the beauty of this approach is that all of the mechanisms involved
also find application in other features.  For example, bind and per-
process name spaces make possible the elegance of rio which
in turn provides the feature of recursively running rio inside a rio
window, something that takes a lot of special effort in X.  Likewise,
when bind is used with import, you can get a particularly elegant
form of network gatewaying.  So I suggest not thinking of bind as
a feature, but as a very general tool for building features.

One objective when implementing a mechanism is that is reduces
the amount of code in other places by more lines than it takes
to implement the mechanism.  There are two major reasons why
it's important to keep the number of lines of code down.  First,
every line is a potential bug.  To a first approximation, the fewer
lines of code the fewer places where you might have bugs.  Second,
every individual and organization has a maximum level of complexity
that it can manage.  Once that point is hit, all new releases merely
rearrange the bugs.  They don't really make the product any better.

A well designed set of mechanisms is like a set of basis vectors
and each point in the vector space is a potential feature.  If your
set of features isn't larger and richer than the set of mechanisms,
then you should go back and rethink the set of mechanisms.  So
when adding a mechanism, you want to make sure you're adding
a new dimension to your feature space.

BLS

Re: [9fans] The Case for Bind

[Fran. J Ballesteros]

I'm going to print your mail, and read it every night. 
thanks. 

> El 15 sept 2017, a las 20:07, Brian L. Stuart <blstuart@bellsouth.net> escribió:
> 
>> On Fri, 9/15/17, Marshall Conover <marzhall.o@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> I'll start digging in to see what I can do. I think I jumped the
>> gun by trying to contribute a feature, ...
> 
> On this point, I'd suggest a slight shift of perspective.  This is something
> that I've tried to convey both to collegues when in industry and to
> students when teaching.  Don't think in terms of implementing features.
> Think instead of implementing mechanisms.  The mindset where every
> feature is implemented with its own mechanisms is the reason so much
> software is so poorly engineered.  Witness the browsers mentioned
> earlier.  Good engineering involves designing and selecting a good
> set of simple mechanisms that when used in various combinations
> provide a rich set of features.  If a mechanism doesn't fit, don't include
> it.  Remember that perfection is achieved not when there's nothing
> left to add, but when there's nothing left to remove.
> 
> Bringing this back to bind, I wouldn't think of bind itself as a feature.
> However, when the bind mechanism is used in conjunction with the
> union directory mechanism and the architecture environment variable,
> the feature of sane multi-architecture binary handling emerges.  No
> where in the source of the shell or the kernel or anywhere else is
> there code specifically designated to make it possible to run the
> correct binary based on the architecture.  Of course, there are
> other ways of accomplishing this feature, such as a path variable,
> but the beauty of this approach is that all of the mechanisms involved
> also find application in other features.  For example, bind and per-
> process name spaces make possible the elegance of rio which
> in turn provides the feature of recursively running rio inside a rio
> window, something that takes a lot of special effort in X.  Likewise,
> when bind is used with import, you can get a particularly elegant
> form of network gatewaying.  So I suggest not thinking of bind as
> a feature, but as a very general tool for building features.
> 
> One objective when implementing a mechanism is that is reduces
> the amount of code in other places by more lines than it takes
> to implement the mechanism.  There are two major reasons why
> it's important to keep the number of lines of code down.  First,
> every line is a potential bug.  To a first approximation, the fewer
> lines of code the fewer places where you might have bugs.  Second,
> every individual and organization has a maximum level of complexity
> that it can manage.  Once that point is hit, all new releases merely
> rearrange the bugs.  They don't really make the product any better.
> 
> A well designed set of mechanisms is like a set of basis vectors
> and each point in the vector space is a potential feature.  If your
> set of features isn't larger and richer than the set of mechanisms,
> then you should go back and rethink the set of mechanisms.  So
> when adding a mechanism, you want to make sure you're adding
> a new dimension to your feature space.
> 
> BLS
> 

[9fans] The Case for Bind

[Chris McGee]

I really like this description.

Thank you

> On Sep 15, 2017, at 2:07 PM, Brian L. Stuart <blstuart at bellsouth.net> wrote:
> 
>> On Fri, 9/15/17, Marshall Conover <marzhall.o at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> I'll start digging in to see what I can do. I think I jumped the
>> gun by trying to contribute a feature, ...
> 
> On this point, I'd suggest a slight shift of perspective.  This is something
> that I've tried to convey both to collegues when in industry and to
> students when teaching.  Don't think in terms of implementing features.
> Think instead of implementing mechanisms.  The mindset where every
> feature is implemented with its own mechanisms is the reason so much
> software is so poorly engineered.  Witness the browsers mentioned
> earlier.  Good engineering involves designing and selecting a good
> set of simple mechanisms that when used in various combinations
> provide a rich set of features.  If a mechanism doesn't fit, don't include
> it.  Remember that perfection is achieved not when there's nothing
> left to add, but when there's nothing left to remove.
> 
> Bringing this back to bind, I wouldn't think of bind itself as a feature.
> However, when the bind mechanism is used in conjunction with the
> union directory mechanism and the architecture environment variable,
> the feature of sane multi-architecture binary handling emerges.  No
> where in the source of the shell or the kernel or anywhere else is
> there code specifically designated to make it possible to run the
> correct binary based on the architecture.  Of course, there are
> other ways of accomplishing this feature, such as a path variable,
> but the beauty of this approach is that all of the mechanisms involved
> also find application in other features.  For example, bind and per-
> process name spaces make possible the elegance of rio which
> in turn provides the feature of recursively running rio inside a rio
> window, something that takes a lot of special effort in X.  Likewise,
> when bind is used with import, you can get a particularly elegant
> form of network gatewaying.  So I suggest not thinking of bind as
> a feature, but as a very general tool for building features.
> 
> One objective when implementing a mechanism is that is reduces
> the amount of code in other places by more lines than it takes
> to implement the mechanism.  There are two major reasons why
> it's important to keep the number of lines of code down.  First,
> every line is a potential bug.  To a first approximation, the fewer
> lines of code the fewer places where you might have bugs.  Second,
> every individual and organization has a maximum level of complexity
> that it can manage.  Once that point is hit, all new releases merely
> rearrange the bugs.  They don't really make the product any better.
> 
> A well designed set of mechanisms is like a set of basis vectors
> and each point in the vector space is a potential feature.  If your
> set of features isn't larger and richer than the set of mechanisms,
> then you should go back and rethink the set of mechanisms.  So
> when adding a mechanism, you want to make sure you're adding
> a new dimension to your feature space.
> 
> BLS
>