Hi Hugo, "Hugo Santos" <hugosantos@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > I completely understand the releasing R1 issue, and these points > very much depend on the objectives Haiku has for R1. Personally i > don't see the pursuing of better dynamicity as blocking to a release. Not really blocking - but delaying in case you would spend your time working on something else we need for R1 ;-) It's your call, of course - if you rather want to tackle a certain issue, I certainly won't stop you; and as long as you produce something that we can keep, it's also not wasted time or anything close to that. It's still very much appreciated, don't get me wrong. > On 4/2/07, Axel Dörfler <axeld@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > I don't see any advantage to change how it's done now; in the end, > > the > > net_server has to do both: listen for configuration changes (ie. > > settings files), and listen to device changes. If a new device pops > > up, > > it needs to look for settings, and if the settings are changed, it > > needs to look up and configure the device. > Right now the net_server does not listen for device changes or the > adding or removal of devices. This is what i was pointing. It is not > a > big change. Okay, maybe I just misunderstood you then :-) > > While this is certainly something to pursue at a later time, I > > don't > > think this is something we should consider before R1 is out of the > > door. > Is IPv6 R1 material? If it is, i think that considering the amount > of effort on making at least the auto configuration modular it is > worth pursuing. I don't think we would delay R1 for IPv6, but it surely doesn't hurt to have it on board :) Besides, when the GSoC happens, this should be your main objective (the mentoring organization will also receive some money in case the student completed his project, btw) :-) That being said, if you really want to add add-on support before R1, do it; it's a good thing, it would happen anyway at some point in the future, it's just not urgent. > > But I'm also not opposed to the idea - a file system is a proven > > way to > > communicate with the userland. I find it ugly to expose this > > functionality in the standard user file name space, but beyond that > > it > > would be a natural choice. > Filesystems are hierarchical interfaces which are very well > understood and we already have a bunch of APIs to handle file system > objects. I agree with your points regarding having this info > available > to the user, but while we don't have filesystem namespaces (eheh) if > required this can be handled specially by the Tracker together with > the other special mount points. Yes, of course, Tracker would completely ignore them - as /pipe (and / dev, for that matter). > > Of course, I also wouldn't like all those special files to export > > the > > addresses and pcap for the interfaces. > Assuming the risk of being pedantic, why not? :-) Why provide more > special calls, be it syscalls or ioctls, to the system? I think we > should point to convergence of interfaces and not divergence. New > interfaces only make sense if the existing ones are completely > unsuitable for whatever objective we have on hands. Well, you couldn't do a lot with those files, and the file vs. function mapping is a bit too open for my taste. You would still need to talk to the directory in order to remove/add/change an address; at least I would find it weird to do a "cat /net/interfaces/0/0" and see "192.168.0.2" in my shell, and especially "echo 192.168.0.2 > /net/ interfaces/0/0". For example, we could also export all sockets in /net/sockets/ - but if you want to do anything useful with those entries, you'll need some special functions (via ioctl()) again; you actually gain very little IMO. So the best reason to do it as a file system is the node monitoring service. > > Anyway, at this point, I would recommend not to do broad changes > > that > > aren't really necessary; I definitely want to get R1 out of the > > door > > one day. > Like i mentioned above i completely agree with the releasing issue, > but when is the "one day"? The rest of us that would like to > contribute a bit in their own areas of interest need to coordinate > their efforts. :-) I think it's clear that for you these changes > aren't necessary but to do some of the things i would like to do, > they > are. And i have the motivation to pursue these changes. Of course > that > it makes no sense for me to engage in this development if its > incompatible with the objectives the developers have set. I notice I should have mentioned that only once, probably ;-) > > For now, I would only add a notification mechanism that works > > similar > > to the FS notifications - as we wanted to make that a more generic > > kernel service anyway, it could just make use of it. The API > > doesn't > > even have to be public for R1 IMO. > By similiar you mean a new interface or something that reuses > watch_node()? I agree with the API visibility point, this is not > really relevant for the API compliance R1 is after. Not watch_node() in userland (as that would indeed need a file system), but the backend in the kernel. Bye, Axel.