Re: No to StowFS!

[olafBuddenhagen]

Hi,

> How about a daemon (or service, or translator, or whatever) that would
> monitor the "/Programs" directory where the new programs are
> installed. And when that daemon sees a new program it automagicaly
> does a "ln -s" for binaries, includes, libraries, etc. That "daemon"
> could be triggered by the installation program, or it could just look
> into /Programs from time to time to see if there are new directories
> around (or it could just be croned to run every few minutes to update
> the envvars if needed).

You have just reinvented stowfs in a non-Hurdish fashion. Congrats :-P

I had the exact same Discussion recently with someone else, regarding
the infodir translator. Of course, one *could* do it using some deamon
and stuff. It's *always* possible to find some awkward solution to a
problem, using limited standard UNIX mechanisms; that's what has been
done on UNIX-like systems for the last 30 years or so, resulting in lots
of bad software.

In the Hurd, we can easily implement *new* mechanisms, more suitable for
the task at hand, whenever we have some interesting problem to solve.
Especially if it's as simple as writing a translator.

This way we can save work, and also get better solutions: A translator
creating a new view of the FS is much simpler, cleaner, more robust,
more transparent, more compatible, more convenient etc. than some daemon
running around and syncing directories in the background.

-antrik-