Thanks Brane... this was very well stated. Bill
At 01:32 AM 12/11/2002, =?UTF-8?B?QnJhbmtvIMSMaWJlag==?= wrote: >Dirk-Willem van Gulik wrote: > >>On 9 Dec 2002 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >> >> >>>This *is* a portability question. >>> >>> >> >>Well this is the crux- I think that this going further than abstracting >>what the OS offer; but trying to put a layer on what a specific machine >>offers or a specific operations environment. >> >> >> >>>It *is* inside the domain of the portability layer. It *does* belong in >>>APR. >>> >>> >> >>Therefore it it is my strong opinion that this is outside the domain of >>portability and therefore should not be part of APR. >> >>Anything which does more than abstracting the pure OS but touches on an >>instance of it I see as bad. >> > >I'm getting the feeling that you don't understand what people are >saying. Most OSes I know have the notion of a (configurable) temporary >directory. For the purpose of brevity, I'll only mention two families: >On Unix, you have the standard $TMPDIR,/var/tmp,/tmp search sequence. On >Windows, it's %TEMP%,%TMP%,%SystemRoot%\TEMP. Windows also has a >GetTempPath() function, that returns a user- or app-specific temporary >directory name. On Unix, _all_ three locations can be tailored for your >application, either by setting the environment variable, or by locking >the app into a chroot jail and mounting /tmp or /var/tmp appropriately. >On Windows the path can be set per-program. > >What we'd like to see in APR is not something above and beyond what the >underlying OS already provides; only a portable interface to those >facilities. There's a very strong argument in favour of putting this >into APR -- we can make sure that our implementation behaves correctly >on each target OS, which is something you can't expect of homegrown >solutions, as you've been saying yourself. > >If you're worried about apps not behaving nicely -- why, if APR doesn't >provide the APIs, people will just go ahead and use the non-portable OS >functions, or worse, think up their own. From a sysadmin's point of >view, there will be absolutely _no_ difference; bad programmers will >behave antisocially whether or not APR provides the portability layer. > >The ony one who loses not having this feature in APR is the responsible >programmer who would _like_ to use a portable API, but can't. Now that >ain't nice. > >-- >Brane Čibej <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.xbc.nu/brane/
