From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: John Murdie <john@cs.york.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: [9fans] Python filesystem
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Cc: John Murdie <john@cs.york.ac.uk>
In-Reply-To: <20011129074900.F317@cackle.proxima.alt.za>
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Message-Id: <E169O7Q-0005Nt-00@minster.cs.york.ac.uk>
Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2001 10:08:30 +0000
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On 29 Nov, Lucio De Re wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 28, 2001 at 07:09:58PM +0000, Matt wrote:
>>
>> I'm surprised more of the command line tools aren't daemonised actually.
>>
> My thinking (just to show how muddled one can get) was to turn
> environments into shells, instead.  Take CVS, for example:
>
> cvs login
> cvs co
> cvs update
> etc.
>
> I'd have a CVS shell accepting all sort of commands:
>
> % CVS
> cvs> login
> cvs> co
> ...
>
> where the commands are scripts and executables built into the shell (or
> not, as one sees fit) and bound to /bin (the traditional home for them)
> in as restricted a namespace as one finds necessary.
>
> Very, very vague, I fear.
>
> ++L

And very, very, retro, and contrary to the Unix (and Plan 9)
`philosophy' of putting commonly-required facilities in (just) one
place. If you did the above, wouldn't you have to add all the non-CVS
facilities of a shell to CVS (and to everything else you turned into a
shell)?

I'm sure a lot of us remember DEC's PIP; file manipulation in a
closed-off environment which had separate and very different grammar
rules from the shell. Uggh!
--

John A. Murdie
Experimental Officer (Software)
Department of Computer Science
University of York
England