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From: terry@cs.weber.edu (A Wizard of Earth C)
Subject: Re: patch for bin/rm/rm.c
Message-ID: <1993Mar29.225841.25448@fcom.cc.utah.edu>
Sender: news@fcom.cc.utah.edu
Organization: Weber State University (Ogden, UT)
References: <f0Yl6J8@quack.kfu.com> <CGD.93Mar23164609@erewhon.CS.Berkeley.EDU> <33469@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 93 22:58:41 GMT
Lines: 48
In article <33469@castle.ed.ac.uk> richard@castle.ed.ac.uk (Richard Tobin) writes:
>In article <CGD.93Mar23164609@erewhon.CS.Berkeley.EDU> cgd@erewhon.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Chris G. Demetriou) writes:
>>which, it should be obvious is an impossibility; you can't delete a
>>dir that you're holding busy, and you "enter" it with the trailing /.
>
>What is the justification for this "holding busy" concept? This kind
>of argument from kernel algorithm to user interface is just what makes
>people think Unix is user-unfriendly.
>
>It's completely clear what "rmdir foo/" should mean and there's no reason
>but laziness that it doesn't work.
Not true!
One person's "completely clear" is not anothers. The question is whether
we should maintain compatability with previous Berkely UNIX releases, or
whether POSIX compliance is more desirable. It's a question of "what is
our future direction going to be?".
I can't see the research being done being reused outside of the experimental
environment unless it conforms to accepted standards, in this case POSIX. My
personal preference would be to make "foo/" mean "foo" in all cases toward
this end; I've even posted (previously) where in the code this would be
done... like variant links, it's a simple hack (which can't be POSIX
compliant).
Obviously our goal is *not* to be another SVR4! ...But committing to the
POSIX road is pretty much a one-way process. Once it's done, we must
accept constraints on what we are allowed to do within the framework of
released code; this is a hefty albatross to carry. It's not a decision
to rush into.
Is now the time to reiterate Robert Withrow's idea of a BSD consortium to
direct the future of BSD and set overall goals (now that CSRG is out of
this business)?
Terry Lambert
terry@icarus.weber.edu
terry_lambert@novell.com
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.
--
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