It totally would have been simpler overall, but each incremental step we made was significantly less work than the refactoring required for pread.
Question.
In 10 years will you be saying this about the next incremental problem that you run into? If you think this likely, then the next incremental problem is an excuse to do it right.
If it's less work to solve that problem than refactor all the relating code, and the impact on maintainability is minimal, likely yes. But considering the amount of users we have and the current lack of any crashes relating to mmap there are unlikely to be any future unforseen issues.
Mmap is right, though. Pread would also be right. There's a tradeoff and the complexity argument would only win if they knew all this when they started.
Question.
In 10 years will you be saying this about the next incremental problem that you run into? If you think this likely, then the next incremental problem is an excuse to do it right.