Robert G. Sohigian wrote:
> Hugh McIntyre wrote:
>
> Hi, Hugh.
>> Robert G. Sohigian wrote:
>>>
>>> Why are these names so darn long?
>>>
>>> firefox-3.0a3.en-US.solaris11-i386.tar.bz2
>>> firefox-3.0a3.en-US.solaris11-sparc.tar.bz2
>>>
>>> Here are some thoughts:
>>>
>>> solaris11: afaik, there is no such thing as "solaris11", and it
>>> shouldn't be used
>>
>> Probably there will be a "Solaris 11" at some point though, and it's
>> less cryptic than "snv". Even if there isn't, it's a less cryptic
>> way of referring to "the version after Solaris 10". Consider a
>> Solaris user who is not keeping track of OpenSolaris and does not
>> want to download a build which won't run on Solaris 10 or earlier by
>> mistake...
> I think there was a marketing edict not to use "Solaris 11".
>
> But, even more than that, /etc/release says:
>
> bash-3.00$ more /etc/release
> Solaris Nevada snv_61 SPARC
> Copyright 2007 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
> Use is subject to license terms.
> Assembled 26 March 2007
>
> and, uname says:
>
> bash-3.00$ uname -a
> SunOS yo-yo 5.11 snv_61 sun4u sparc SUNW,A70
>
> afaik, there's nothing in how a system identifies itself that says
> "Solaris 11".
uname has _never_ said Solaris. It only provides SunOS version informatin.
>
>>
>>> i386: 386 went away awhile ago... why not x86?
>>
>> "isainfo" says "i386". As does "uname -p".
> Still, as far as marketing goes, we're supposed to use "x86", correct?
Heh. And then there is i86pc, which is what uname -m reports.
But the x86 archives for Solaris have always been referred to as
"i386"... I have used this name in my downloadable ethernet driver
archives for some time now... even though I suspect some of the people
who are now using are younger than the genuine i386 architecture. :-)
Anyway, the name is coded into a lot of places... the i386 name isn't
going away easily... i86pc would be a better name, but even better
would be ia32, but any change would break too many other unbundled
pieces of software that rely on the output of uname.
[snip!]
>>
>>> So, something like:
>>>
>>> firefox-3.0a3-snv-x86.tar.bz2
>>> firefox-3.0a3-snv-sparc.tar.bz2
>>
>> "snv" is too cryptic, IMHO at least, even though I know what it means.
> IMHO, if folks aren't familiar with snv by looking at /etc/release or
> uname, I think we
> might question their ability to install packages. :)
A lot of people don't know about /etc/release. Recall that in the
Solaris 2.5 days there was no /etc/release. :-) I would prefer to see
"nevada" or "opensolaris" used, if we're going to use marketing names.
-- Garrett
