Porting Tailscale to Plan 9 • Hacker News Board

Re: Porting Tailscale to Plan 9

#21

Post by rsc » Wed, Apr 02, 2025, 4:33 PM UTC

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #11

I like the premise of the joke, but then as the explanation ran on... I suddenly became depressed. So much broken stuff, so much complexity.... to, what, make a network tunnel? If all this extra work was the joke, that would be funny.

We had to do some Plan 9 work, which makes sense when doing something new, but the actual Tailscale implementation is far _less_ work than for other Unixes.

Re: Porting Tailscale to Plan 9

#22

Post by rsc » Wed, Apr 02, 2025, 4:35 PM UTC

mcdow wrote: post #4

Rob Pike is in shambles after this devastating betrayal

Not sure what the betrayal is? He contributed a quote for yesterday's post. https://tailscale.com/blog/tailscale-enterprise-plan-9-suppo...

Re: Porting Tailscale to Plan 9

#23

Post by yjftsjthsd-h » Wed, Apr 02, 2025, 4:37 PM UTC

packetlost wrote: post #10

I unironically wish there was an enterprise version of Plan 9. I've been writing most of my scripts in `rc` (something my coworkers put up with because we use nix and I can pull it in automatically with dirnev) and it has been great.

I would worry less about other people being able to run rc scripts and more about them being able to read/edit them.

Re: Porting Tailscale to Plan 9

#24

Post by packetlost » Wed, Apr 02, 2025, 4:40 PM UTC

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #23

packetlost wrote: post #10

I unironically wish there was an enterprise version of Plan 9. I've been writing most of my scripts in `rc` (something my coworkers put up with because we use nix and I can pull it in automatically with dirnev) and it has been great.

I would worry less about other people being able to run rc scripts and more about them being able to read/edit them.

they're routinely very short, and the only non-obvious syntax for someone familiar with a C-like language is the ~ command and redirecting to stderr. They're pretty much always easier to read (and write) than bash scripts in general because of how little weird/surprising syntax there is. Not being a derivative of ALGOL has its perks.

Most scripts are write-once:read-never, especially if you actually implement -h/--help

Re: Porting Tailscale to Plan 9

#25

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 02, 2025, 4:44 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Porting Tailscale to Plan 9

#26

Post by undersuit » Wed, Apr 02, 2025, 4:44 PM UTC

bradfitz wrote: post #17

Happy to answer any questions! A bunch of us are currently in https://meet.google.com/qre-gydb-mkv chatting about this. (Edit: the hour is over; we all left) The earlier Apr 1st blog post was https://tailscale.com/blog/tailscale-enterprise-plan-9-suppo...

I've never set up a Plan 9 system... does this allow the distributed systems communications to run through my Tailnet?

Re: Porting Tailscale to Plan 9

#27

Post by liotier » Wed, Apr 02, 2025, 4:46 PM UTC

ziddoap wrote: post #15

candiddevmike wrote: post #8

[flagged]

Seems like learning was done and fun was had, alongside some marketing content being produced. In turn, I got some learning done and some entertainment. I think those are all benefits.

Also, portability is a sign of a rather sane codebase - good vibes for Tailscale !

Re: Porting Tailscale to Plan 9

#28

Post by pvg » Wed, Apr 02, 2025, 4:47 PM UTC

tiffanyh wrote: post #20

pvg wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure it takes more than that to shamble an Olympic Silver Medal winner in archery.

Isn't that a joke. He didn't actually go to the olympics. https://wiki.c2.com/?RobPike

It is pretty clear that neither you nor these 'c2' characters have lettered in anything, including the Olympics.

Re: Porting Tailscale to Plan 9

#29

Post by bradfitz » Wed, Apr 02, 2025, 4:48 PM UTC

undersuit wrote: post #26

bradfitz wrote: post #17

Happy to answer any questions! A bunch of us are currently in https://meet.google.com/qre-gydb-mkv chatting about this. (Edit: the hour is over; we all left) The earlier Apr 1st blog post was https://tailscale.com/blog/tailscale-enterprise-plan-9-suppo...

I've never set up a Plan 9 system... does this allow the distributed systems communications to run through my Tailnet?

I think so! Caveat is I've never really used Plan 9 outside of single-user VMs.

Re: Porting Tailscale to Plan 9

#30

Post by badc0ffee » Wed, Apr 02, 2025, 4:53 PM UTC

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #11

I like the premise of the joke, but then as the explanation ran on... I suddenly became depressed. So much broken stuff, so much complexity.... to, what, make a network tunnel? If all this extra work was the joke, that would be funny.

It sounds like the Go compiler is better after this effort - fewer Plan 9 special cases in the code.