Daemon's Advocate article

[William A. Carrel]

In article <40441cbe$0$184$415eb37d at xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
 Robert Garrett <rg70 at xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> David Cuthbert wrote:
> > Matthew Dillon wrote:
> > 
> >>     Hey, here's an idea... using the VFS wrapper idea our     'ports' 
> >> system could create a namespace that makes everything
> >>     appear to be preinstalled.
> > 
> > 
> > Interesting experiment, but I think too much would break in reality.
> > 
> > There are a lot of autoconf scripts that, for example, check permissions 
> > and usability of include files and libraries as well as xxxx-config 
> > shell scripts.  Quite often, I don't *want* some of these obscure/broken 
> > libraries linked in.
> > 
> The only way I can think of for this to be practical would be to install
> precompiled trusted packages. I can't ascertain that a port will in fact 
> build.

Well, just trying to exec() something isn't exactly a guarantee that it 
is going to execute.  EACCES or EIO might make some sense in this case...

Theoretically the VFS will be able to throw some error.  The need for 
some more flexible error messages from VFS mounts is also evident in 
other potential VFS applications...  
-- 
William A. Carrel