Re: Capabilities

[Bas Wijnen]

On Mon, Feb 13, 2006 at 10:51:46AM -0300, Leonardo Pereira wrote:
> Let me see if I understood, we will need to develop new interpreters to turn
> possible a sane use of capabilities on interpreted programs?

No.  We need to write a POSIX layer which makes using capabilities for POSIX
programs possible.  This layer will probably present them to the POSIX program
as files (some in /dev, some "normal" files).

The POSIX program will see those files when it browses the filesystem (which
is provided to it by the POSIX layer), and can open an read/write them as
usual.  No changes to their source code must be needed.  This is in fact
important IMO, because we cannot change all POSIX programs.  There's just too
many of them.

We can also write new interpreters (or other programs for that matter, all
this is not specific for interpreters), which know about capabilities.  They
can use all the features directly, and possibly in more advanced ways than
POSIX allows.  Without those programs, the system isn't much better than
POSIX.  So we will want to write such programs.  But POSIX programs can run as
well (and that includes POSIX interpreters).

Thanks,
Bas

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