Mail Systems (was Re: mapping files to objects )

[Mike McDonald]

>To: Kelly Murray <kem@franz.com>
>Subject: Re: Mail Systems (was Re: mapping files to objects ) 
>From: cwg@deepeddy.com
>Date: Wed, 07 May 1997 14:30:47 -0500
>
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>> OK.  What I've decided would be a good way to get the code writing ball rolling
>> is to use this mail system stuff as an example.
>> I'm going to go ahead and do what I've said, walk-the-walk as I say.
>> I'll write the low-level SMTP agent, using ACL and Linux and dumplisp,
>> and then write some bad simple user interface to it.
>> I can't actually use it myself for my real work, but I will actually
>> try and use it for something.
>> 
>> I'll then make this code available and
>> others can see it and play with it, and I hope use it to aid in
>> other such systems or at least get a more concrete idea of what I'm
>> talking about.
>
>Great.  Just a couple of comments.
>
>1) Didn't we agree on CMU-CL?  Since that's about all we've agreed on so far, 
>it seems odd to use ACL instead.

  CMU-CL is NOT ready to be used. It does NOT have a working
debugger/single stepper. It does NOT have threads. (You need threads
if you are going to write deamons!) Since I haven't seen anyone
volunteer to help the CMUCL on 386 guys implement the things we need,
we're at their mercy as to if and when that functionality is
available. 

>2) Please make sure your design has the ability to deal with all the security 
>issues properly:

  Kelly is planning on implementing a proof of concept/demo of the
idea of building a system based upon POS ideas instead of file
systems. He want to use the SMTP agent as an example. He's NOT
claiming that what he's doing is the final, full featured SMTP agent.

  Mike McDonald
  mikemac@engr.sgi.com