Every so often, I start wondering why the plumber isn't simpler. Here's my simpler design: There is no plumber. Instead, `plumb` reads the plumbing files and acts accordingly. To receive input from the plumber, programs post a pipe in /srv. No need for a special-purpose filesystem.
It will break if multiple processes post the same pipe, the second process won't be able to create the pipe. Isn't that a good thing? Plumber behaviour is to send messages to all recipients, which has surprised me a few times when I wasn't quite alert. It would also break my use case of separate plumber instances for separate activities; there is only one #s, but I don't think anyone does this other than me. It can be done another way, with plumber rules to discriminate by directory, but that takes a bit more setup. I would work if there could be multiple srv(3) filesystems, which I think would sometimes be useful for other tasks too. To make this work, all the programs which currently address '#s/filename' would have to be changed to address the full path. Then creation permission would control which of the srv filesystems gets the pipe. Just musing on architecture. Comments welcome. -- 2.1.3. Life with eternal upgrades
