[EROS-Arch] Installers

[Norman Hardy]

At 4:46 AM +0200 3/27/01, Pascal J. Bourguignon wrote:
>  > From: "Jonathan S. Shapiro" <shap@eros-os.org>

....


>
>>  The problem with the incremental strategy is that over time I will forget
>>  what authority a program holds, and I might slowly give it combinations of
>>  authorities that are well-suited to misuse or abuse.
>
>A good point.
>
>But were  we not to have a  good feed back of  the assigned capacities
>from the user interface ? This probably should be general: each time a
>capacity is  to be  assigned to an  entity, the user  interface should
>list the capacities the entity already holds.

I agree. The installer will leave behind an ordinary object which 
itself may be mutable,
and which probably serves as a source of application instances, 
probably doing so as a
discreet factory.

A command system should be able to remember for the user what capabilities
have been passed to the original yield of the installer, as well as to specific
instances. Ours doesn't do that, alas.
--------
You can never be sure that an application will not come to need authority
that was unforeseen at installation. That doesn't mean that you must grant it.
If the durability schemes are achieved then you can be sure that such new
"requirements" are not an excuse for canceling extant instances.
-- 
Norman Hardy  <http://cap-lore.com/>