[unios] Re: Generic Design

[Pieter Dumon]

From: Pieter Dumon <Pieter.Dumon@rug.ac.be>

The generic design implies this:

 - objects can be accessed by other objects if those have the right
permissions.
 - files are objects.

This turns out to be an invertion of POSIX, you know. 
Just the other way round : POSIX represents everything by just
general files,in this design everything is represented with some
specific object, and files are a type of such objects.
In fact, the Unix system is lots more generic : all files, and as such all
hardware and other objects that are represented by files, have the SAME 
interface. Your "generic" design isn't as generic as POSIX, because all
objects can have other interfaces.

Everytime one tries to think of something new, he discovers it's already
done in a much more efficient and generic and flexible and portable and
scalable way by POSIX. Just the Unix kernel design isn't as flexible, and
Unix is not distributed (although POSIX can be). 

I'm not saying POSIX is the best OS interface and I surely don't say Unix
has a good low-level design, but when you just look at POSIX (= the unix
interface & APIs), it's still the best design we have up to today.

We will really have to think about something _NEW_ if we want more
flexibility (on the level higher than the kernel), or stay with the
designs we have, i.e. POSIX,Win32 and some others.
  
Pieter.

----------------------------------------
 Pieter.Dumon@rug.ac.be               
                                      
 http://studwww.rug.ac.be/~pdumon     
 
 ICQ  : 12428974
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