[gentoo-dev] /proc and portage

[Thomas Flavel <thomasfl@cogs.susx.ac.uk>]

Hi,

I had an idea I dimsmissed which I thought I should post anyway, on the off chance that it
might actually get used ;)

I was thinking about how /proc is sometimes used as a bi-directional interface, for example I
can "echo 1>/proc/whatever" to turn on ping flood protection or something similar. I was
wondering how practical it would be to have a similar thing for portage?

If I could say "echo gimp>/proc/portage/install" or "cat /proc/portage/packages" etc then
this would mean that it would be very easy to write front ends for portage, plus with this
minimal interface it would be very nice to use in scripts... I know it would be a massive
kernel module, and probably too much effort to actually produce/maintain but I thought you
should hear the idea... have a think about it please

- Tom