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Part of the UNIX philosophy is to expose as a file what can be exposed as a file. That way, open, read, write and close is all you need.
by pilif 11y ago
Part of the UNIX philosophy is to expose as a file what can be exposed as a file. That way, open, read, write and close is all you need.
- retrogradeorbit 11y agoIs it? I understand there are many things in UNIX that are exposed as file like objects, but is it part of the philosophy that this should be done with anything that it _can_ be done on? Can you cite me any sources?
- protomyth 11y agoI've heard and read that for Plan 9, but I too would like the source for UNIX.
- em3rgent0rdr 11y agoEverything a file, even the computer itself: https://media.giphy.com/media/P7PmvHY6kzAqY/giphy.gif https://media.giphy.com/media/P7PmvHY6kzAqY/giphy.gif
- protomyth 11y agoThat's not a real good reason given the damage and since we're talking about systemd.
- ustolemyname 11y agoGiven that much of the criticism of systemd is based on, "it's not like Unix," that certainly seems like enough of a reason to me. People would complain even more if systemd required a custom library to install your bootloader than they do when calling rm -rf / on a system without GNU extensions (--preserve-root by default) bricks a motherboard.
- protomyth 11y agoFreeBSD uses a library and I don't think it suffers from criticism that its not UNIX. UNIX isn't Plan 9, and exposing something that can brick your system in the filesystem is just irresponsible. You can blame the vendor, but it should have never gotten as far as the vendor's bad decisions.