linux registry (no, not that again!)

[Matthew Miller]

On Wed, Jul 28, 2004 at 05:28:11PM +0100, Jonathan Andrews wrote:
> Minimal for who ??   Configuration state is just as much a need for
> processes as RAM or files. Even the flash based set to box will get
> turned on and off !  

Minimal for "_needs_ to be in the kernel". This clearly doesn't need that
level of privilege, and there would be no technical benefit, so it has no
business being there.

> Ok, I bow to one who knows more than me - so its a user space problem, I
> still think a common (thats to all distributions) API for configuration
> should exist, where do you think it should live - Is it not a core
> requirement for applications ? If so it should be a common component of
> all Linux ? Maybe it should be in libc ? It would make grep simpler to
> write :-)

It might be okay as part of libc. But honestly, I think that would make such
a library _less_ widely used. Programs should be portable between flavors of
*nix, and if the Linux version has this weird non-portable extension, it
won't do much. Better to make it a separate, small library. And, there's
several such libraries in existence already (look on Freshmeat). I think
what you should do is pick the best one, and work to get that in the Linux
Standard Base.

-- 
Matthew Miller           mattdm at mattdm.org        <http://www.mattdm.org/>
Boston University Linux      ------>                <http://linux.bu.edu/>