On Sun, Apr 23, 2006 at 11:30:00AM -0400, Dennis Clarke wrote:

> I therefore propose that any and all optional software that shall be
> installed into the /opt filesystem also respect these standards.

I'm uncertain what you mean by this.  In most cases, the standards for
commands are already met by existing OpenSolaris software; there would
seem to be little value in installing additional software with
identical functionality.  Most third-party open source software
provides functionality not specified by any standard or in a few
cases, both compatible and incompatible extensions.  Surely you don't
mean to exclude that software or disable the (often desired)
extensions, especially given that standards-compliant flavours are
only a /usr/XXX/bin away?

Or perhaps you mean to address header and namespace concerns?  While
there are relevant issues here, once again most of the headers
installed aren't specified by any standard.  Certainly it would be
useful if these headers were engineered to avoid unnecessary namespace
pollution, but in many cases that would also cause unexpected and
undesirable side effects for library consumers which may be expecting
the same behaviour across all operating systems.

Could you please elaborate?

-- 
Keith M Wesolowski              "Sir, we're surrounded!" 
Solaris Kernel Team             "Excellent; we can attack in any direction!" 

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