Posix Has Become Outdated (2016) [pdf]

Post by pjmlp » Sat, Feb 11, 2017, 8:25 PM UTC

School-Cotton wrote: post #144

pjmlp wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GUI tooling? Languages like Python?

How would you do this with GUI tooling: Find all files containing a particular string in a directory tree. For each of those files, if its filename appears in a file called Whitelist, write it to a file called Output. Otherwise, do nothing. Here is one possible command line version (I haven't tested it as I'm on mobile): TMPF=`mktemp /tmp/XXXXXXXX` && ag MyString | awk -F: '{print $1}' | sort | uniq > $TMPF && comm -…

    import glob
    import shutil
     
    whitelist =  set(open('Whitelist').read().split())
    for fd in [ x for x in glob.glob('mydir/*', recursive=True) if x in whitelist]:
       shutil.copy(fd, 'OUTPUT')

Post by cperciva » Sat, Feb 11, 2017, 8:33 PM UTC

mwfunk wrote: post #166

yarou wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a little confused by the distinction. For example, if I use a framework that abstracts away pthreads from me, but still uses pthreads in its implementation of threading, is the application I write still POSIX-compliant?

No, the application would not be POSIX-compliant, but it would be running on a POSIX-compliant OS. I was confused by the comment I replied to because it sounded like he was saying that POSIX compliance was more likely in "modern" applications, but if anything the opposite is the case. POSIX compliance is much more common in consumer OSes nowadays, to the point that every major desktop and mobile platform is built on…

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Feb 11, 2017, 8:40 PM UTC

kyberias wrote: post #122

AnonymousPlanet wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at the design of NT. Every output is based on IPC and calls to the event logger. That something like a stdout exists is due to backwards compatibility and mostly the Posix subsystem. The entire OS was meant to be used and administrated by means of GUI. The existence of a bunch of CLI tools that deviate from the main paradigm doesn't prove anything to the contrary. Have a look at the literature on the design and…

>"Every output is based on IPC and calls to the event logger." What does that even mean? I think you're painting an incorrect picture of the design goals of NT. The original NT was designed by a group of people (e.g. Cutler) with VMS background and they sure as hell didn't have any GUI in mind. In fact, Windows came to the picture much later. Whether NT is administered by a GUI or CLI is totally irrelevant to NT desi…

Post by qznc » Sat, Feb 11, 2017, 8:56 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #163

Reasonable enough. The article focuses on client-side programs, especially Android, which have somewhat different requirements than the Posix model envisions. Most of the things you need to do on headless servers can be done through the Posix model. The big weaknesses in Posix they point out are in interprocess communication and parallelism. Both were afterthoughts in UNIX. UNIX/Linux land never had a good IPC mechan…

Post by dfox » Sat, Feb 11, 2017, 9:03 PM UTC

qznc wrote: post #177

Animats wrote: post #163

Reasonable enough. The article focuses on client-side programs, especially Android, which have somewhat different requirements than the Posix model envisions. Most of the things you need to do on headless servers can be done through the Posix model. The big weaknesses in Posix they point out are in interprocess communication and parallelism. Both were afterthoughts in UNIX. UNIX/Linux land never had a good IPC mechan…

I don't know QNX, but for IPC you should also take a good look at the L4 microkernel IPCs. It might be what you describe here. The point is that they are fast. Nearly function-call-speed. The should probably a more complex IPC layer on top or beside it. Something like DBus with schemas, names, groups, broadcasts, etc because otherwise people will reinvent it poorly.