What is the plan for permissions in R2?
When Haiku goes multi-user, I’d like to see ACLs as the only way to do permissions - command-line and GUI. I don’t know what the engineering effort is, but I’d be disappointed if it took the easy route and became dependent on the archaic Owner/Group/Other. Haiku should be more modern than that.
Any info/comments would be appreciated (sorry if it’s been raised before)
Chris
We had discussions that we want to add ACLs, but I think that nobody can say yet what R2 will look like. We’ll have to catch up with other operating systems in a lot of areas and it’s still too early for planning the details of R2.
Linux permissions are really boring (especially during development and web development).
I think Haiku should not just copy/paste that “rubbish” permission system.
The behavior i suggest is:
Full access enabled by default (like windows) to newly created files, but when a file is marked as “protected” (a boolean attribute) then Haiku will identify the process/user who wants to access it.
If the user/process matches the “owner” it will give full access else it will check if “others” have these permissions.
And “user group” field should be removed (just one owner and others).
“others” means any other user/process than “owner”.
ACLs is THE ONLY acceptable option for a modern OS. Unix permissions system is outdated for 10 years as for now. Does it make any sense to develop a well-architectured OS based on technology of 70s?
I think that multi-user and rermissions are not required for desktop OS. Computers are cheap now and having an individual computer is not a problem.
About ACL vs UNIX permissions: BeFS and API are handcoded to use UNIX permissions so changing permission system can break compatability.
As long as we don’t implement ACLs similar to that of Windows, which is complex and confusing and has some overlapping attributes between permission types (which don’t make sense).