On Sat, 25 Mar 2000, Greg A. Woods wrote:

# > I am in favor of beefing up /kern, but it must be done in a
# > machine-readable way; the current output of sysctl -a, or
# > mixerctl/audioctl, is not too bad, actually. (See also environ(7).)
# 
# The issue is not between "human" and "machine" readability -- it is
# simply one of ensuring the data formats are carefully and firmly
# specified.  Why give up human readability when you don't have to!?!?!?
# Providing for human readability of data has the advantage of almost
# guaranteeing machine-independent data will stay that way too.
# 
# It should go without saying of course that ideally each structure should
# be run-time extensible and/or versioned too so that issues with upgrades
# are dealt with implicilty.
# 
# Indeed the concept of having so many namespaces in BSD is highly
# questionable.  libkvm, sysctl, et al should all be moved to the
# filesystem namespace.

Greg.  Go run Plan 9 if that's what you're after. :-)

I disagree with everything living in filesystem namespace.  It's an added
level of interpretation, context and complexity that doesn't need to be
there.

				--*greywolf;
--
BSD: Feed The Computer.