[COFF] Re: [TUHS] Re: Be there a "remote diff" utility?

[Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com>]

On Thu, May 16, 2024 at 7:51 AM John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org> wrote:
> [snip]
> This appears to be a VHS vs. Betamax battle: NFS was not transparent, but Sun had far more marketing clout.  However, the Manchester Connection required a single uid space (as far as I can tell), which may also have been a (perceived) institutional barrier.

So did NFS, for that matter.

This is one of those areas where Unix appears creaky in comparison to
Plan 9. `ssh` is all about remote access to resources, whereas plan 9
was all about resource sharing: you'd set up a namespace with all of
the resources (exposed as files from wherever they ultimately came
from) you cared about, and then operate on those "locally"; the
resources were shared with you and access was transparent, via a
consistent, file-based interface. You want to `diff` two remote files?
Import the filesystems they're both on, mount those somewhere, and
`diff /n/host1/file /n/host2/file`.

I think the `sshfs`+FUSE model that Doug mentioned is about the
closest you're going to get these days.

        - Dan C.


        - Dan C.