Re: Directory-change notification (was Re: Desktop)

[Roberto Zunino <zunino cli di unipi it>]

On Mon, 14 Feb 2000, Aaron Lehmann wrote:

> I see a lot of kernel space discussion going on. By "the kernel", I think
> you mean "the Linux kernel". Please keep in mind that Linux is not the
> only Unixlike OS and not everyone uses it. Last time I checked gnome ran
> on other platforms and I think that is not something which would be good
> to break.
> 
> Aaron Lehmann

There are some features that more or less require some help from the
kernel: usually they are not "essential" features but they are worth
including if the implementation is reasonably simple and efficient.

In this particular case, we'd want the filemanager to update the listing
of a directory if it changes. I can live without it, especially if I know
that there isn't a simple/portable/efficient way to to it. In spite of
this, if on some platforms this can be done in a easy way the filemanager
could use this platform-dependent function and have this extra feature.

This isn't going to break anything on ohter platforms/os: they simply
won't have the extra features. Of course, we can always ask who's
developing the kernel we are using to include something into the kernel to
help up adding the extra features. These kernel feature requests,
moreover, are not GNOME-specific.

Please note that this is not Linux-specific. I believe that developers are
ready to accept patches for any platform/os. If Linux will have more extra
featues than os Y, it's only beacuse Linux will offer more features to the
developer than the os Y. The viceversa is also ok.

Zun.