The STREAMS non-inclusion in Linux

[Omer Zak]

Thanks, Geoff Mendelson and Shlomi Fish, for helping me understand why
STREAMS didn't find its way into Linux.

Intuitively, drivers stacked according to STREAMS interfaces and
protocols would be slower than monolithic drivers accomplishing the same
function.  Therefore the monolithic solution would be preferred.

This is especially true as Linux kernel supports loading and unloading
of driver modules, so it does not cost much to replace the equivalent of
one stack of drivers by the equivalent of another stack of drivers.

I was amused to read that one of the POSIX standards was affected by
Linux' insistence upon not implementing STREAMS in the standard kernel.

--- Omer


On Wed, 2011-04-20 at 13:03 +0300, Shlomi Fish wrote:
> Hi Omer,
> 
> On Wednesday 20 Apr 2011 08:09:35 Omer Zak wrote:
> > One of the things in which Linux diverges from Unix is Linux'
> > non-implementation of STREAMS.
> > 
> > STREAMS can roughly be described as a way to organize drivers dealing
> > with I/O.
> > 
> > Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STREAMS
> > Linux Journal article: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3086
> > 
> > None of them has details about the reasons, which led Linux Kernel
> > developers to reject STREAMS.  STREAMS was only vaguely described as
> > poorly-designed and resource-consuming.
> > 
> > Where can I find, if it exists at all, the definitive article which
> > spells out the reasons for rejection of STREAMS?
> > 
> 
> Well, I should note that Eric Raymond has written about STREAMS here:
> 
> * http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch07s03.html

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