From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-Id: From: Ethan Grammatikidis To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> In-Reply-To: <7bb96b8b13743503be8ff3da9c090cd9@coraid.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=WINDOWS-1252; format=flowed; delsp=yes Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v936) Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2010 22:37:51 +0000 References: <61BB2336-8262-4E45-B14A-F313CEA50EF1@fastmail.fm> <7bb96b8b13743503be8ff3da9c090cd9@coraid.com> Subject: Re: [9fans] Man pages for add-ons Topicbox-Message-UUID: f578cc78-ead5-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 On 26 Mar 2010, at 21:32, erik quanstrom wrote: >> Oh, yeah, lets all learn about namespaces and the counterintuitive >> things they do and don't do, and compiling and everything to do when >> it goes wrong, and a billion other things JUST to save devs having to >> work out a good solution! > > mmm. i don't know of any counterintuative things > that namespaces do. do you have an example? > further, you're going to have to know how namespaces > work to use plan 9 interactively or as a developer. I wish I could put my finger on a specific example. Coming from Linux =20= I really struggled to understand how name spaces and file servers =20 worked together for some time. One day it just clicked, and I think it =20= was well worth learning, but compiling stuff isn't in the same class, =20= it's a means to an end and more of a chore. I take the perspective =20 that computers should reduce chores as much as they possibly can. ;) > > i think the valid =97 and deep =97 question here is how > complicated a namespace one wishes to construct. > i see practical limits to how many entries a human can > understand. the machine of course, doesn't care. Indeed, and a limit which varies from person to person, hence why I'm =20= fighting namespace growth. ;) You could say I'm trading one complexity =20= for another: arguing for growing system directories instead. I find a =20= good package manager helps a great deal with the filesystem. When you =20= can query to find which package a file comes from, then query on the =20 package name to find the docs, config files, executables, anything you =20= want by filename and then some, that's quite a help with organising. You know... /opt style might not be so bad after all. It may make the =20= namespace a long list, but it would be a list which could very easily =20= be grepped for package name and I'm sure quite a simple script could =20 find which package a file in the 'bound tree' is really in. --=20 Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it. -- Alan Perlis