[cap-talk] Google's Native Client (NaCl)

[Sam Mason]

On Mon, Oct 05, 2009 at 09:02:26PM +0000, Karp, Alan H wrote:
> Sam Mason wrote:
> > I don't think compatibility was ever going to be much of a focus with
> > it; I think it's more about bringing ocap security to the world of
> > web-browser plugins.  
> 
> Minor point.  I don't recall seeing anything to indicate that NaCl
> uses capabilities.

It's structure seemed a very capability-like design to me.  It starts
confined and communication to and from a nativeclient seems through a
"NaCl socket", it's the calling code's choice which other NaCl modules
it sees, and so on.  The original paper[1] says:

  NaCl resource descriptors are analogous to capabilities in systems
  such as EROS.

or am I getting blinded by the detail?

-- 
  Sam  http://samason.me.uk/

 [1] http://nativeclient.googlecode.com/svn/data/docs_tarball/nacl/googleclient/native_client/documentation/nacl_paper.pdf