Re: [PATCH] * hurd/translator/httpfs.mdwn: added a link to sitemaps.org.

[Sergey Bugaev]

On Mon, May 22, 2023 at 6:50 PM jbranso@dismail.de <jbranso@dismail.de> wrote:
> +- Teach httpfs to check if the computer has an internet connection at
> +  startup and during operation.  The translator causes 30 second
> +  pauses on commands like "ls", when the internet is down.  It is
> +  probably better to teach libnetfs to test for internet connectivity.

Why?

libnetfs, despite its name, has nothing to do with the network. In
fact, it is designed in such a way that is nice for writing
"pseudo-filesystems", but not really suitable for *network*
filesystems. A more appropriate name for libnetfs would be
libpseudofs. It is possible to write network filesystems based on
libnetfs (as httpfs demonstrates), but it's not optimized for that,
and many issues start to pop up once you try to. Some day I will write
a long email detailing why :)

Sergey