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Date:      Sun, 21 Dec 2014 21:26:37 +0530
From:      Mayuresh Kathe <mayuresh@kathe.in>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   posix has been rendered useless, isn't it?
Message-ID:  <20141221155635.GA1388@aio>

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hello,

there's a question which i have not been able to
find an answer to yet, hence venture to pose here.

i have been studying the unix way of doing things,
i.e. tool-chaining to combine small programs for
accomplishing a solution.

but, almost none of today's servers built for any
of today's unix-like systems adhere to the unix
philosophy. most of them instead, are large
applications.

does that mean, posix has been rendered useless?
if yes, what's the need to have so much support
for the posix standard?

wouldn't it make more sense to have a components
based layer surrounding the kernel?
components would be specialized programs designed
to accomplish one task, and do it well, and which
in turn would communicate with other components
over clean and well designed interfaces.
yes, this is what exists right now, but somehow,
the idea doesn't reach out deep enough.
i couldn't find a way to write a c-shell script
to create a workable mail server in minimal time.

i apologize if i have provoked anyone, it's not
my intention, but, it's just frustrating to note
that there's so much work being done towards
writing more and more server programs, but none
of them adhere to the base philosophy of the
system for which they are supposedly crafted.
it's like, people are writing 'vms' style programs
for unix-like systems.

that's crazy, isn't it?

~mayuresh




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