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It's kinda why I think something like an exokernel would make more sense than way OSes trying to abstract things to a certain level. We should be trying to buil
by anfilt 7y ago
It's kinda why I think something like an exokernel would make more sense than way OSes trying to abstract things to a certain level. We should be trying to build abstractions that can be peeled layer by layer like an onion, not a potato.
- kragen 7y agoUnix files aren't quite an exokernel-style "just securely multiplex the disk" but in some ways they come closer than some other alternatives. No file types, just randomly accessible bytes (well, and an execute bit); no multiple streams; no ISAM, just bytes (except that you do have directories); no insertion (but you do have append and truncate). You could make them more disk-like by making them fixed-size, with the size specified at creation time, and accessing them in blocks rather than in bytes. Would those be an improvement? I tend to think not. Certainly if those were the semantics provided by the kernel you would want userland filesystem processes to provide appendable files. Copy-on-write file versioning and cross-file, cross-process transactions, on the other hand, could be real pluses. I'd be okay with those being provided by userland processes rather than the kernel, but I'd sure like to have them.