Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

It’s a thing born in google. It shows. The reasoning behind problems and solutions is so abstract that makes for a beautiful paper or a nightmarish reality. In the ‘80s there was a little known machine, called the Commodore Amiga. Paths were addressed by a volume:folder/file schema. Apps had logical volumes too (progdir:) and the os injected others (env: temp: fonts: ..) guess what? Just use that schema and control what an app can access or not. If you don’t give me a volume for a disk, I cannot make my way to it if it’s not collated into a mountpoint thing



This particular idea wasn't born in Google; it traces back through previous secure OSes like EROS and KeyKOS maybe with a dash of Plan 9 thrown in.


NLTSS as well


What you describe is called "namespaces". Plan 9 and Linux have them already.


In Plan 9, special measures were taken to get dot dot right, not so much because of private namespaces but because of bind.

http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/lexnames


For those uninitiated to Plan9, binds are basically the replacement for symlinks (they're kind of like a mix of mount namespaces and bind mounts but more fundamentally baked into Plan9).


I wouldn't say the Amiga was little known, though it did lose the war over the desktop.

I like that syntax by the way, kind of like drive letters but much more descriptive and not limited to A-Z. Netware also used it for full path specs.


I believe it comes from DIGITAL systems, eg VMS.


Docker "Volumes" are headed that way... but aren't quite there yet. There's a lot of finer detail to hash out first, though.




Consider applying for YC's Spring batch! Applications are open till Feb 11.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: