Re: libpax?

>From [email protected] Tue Jun 25 01:11:31 2002

>Joerg Schilling <[email protected]> wrote:
>> -	If a tar library in a closed application (such as the kernel) failes,
>> 	there is no way to work around the problem. You are bound to the
>> 	specialized code in the clused application.

>I'm not talking about a kernel.  I`m talking about the Hurd, where a
>file system is just like any other program and can be replaced easiely,
>without need for being the administrator.  The tarfs I am talking about
>will be a program, running under the user ID of the user, having a
>process ID etc.

It seems that you don't understand :-(


I was talking about a closed application. The Hurd kernel is such a closed
application!

If you have problems on the command line, it takes you 5 minutes to fetch
the star sources and 2 minutes to compile (because this works "out of the box").

Any driver (regardless whether it lives in kernel space or in user space) uses
specialized code. If you find that such a beast does not work as expected, you
_cannot_ simply put the star code into the fs driver.

If you are lucky and knowledgeable, you may be able to fix the source in less than
2 days. If I would be forced to write something like libtar from scratch, I would 
need 2 weeks, other people would need more than 2 months. As you see, the effort
for fixing a bug is most likely far bejond the expected result. 


Jörg

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