On Sunday, May 12, 2013 12:51 AM, Josef 'Jeff' Sipek wrote:
On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 09:12:34AM -0700, Bryan Cantrill wrote:
On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 7:59 AM, Garrett D'Amore <[email protected]> wrote:
...
Stupid question (and not meant to be a troll): how does Linux handle this?
I think Linux handles it by decentralizing. You have the kernel folks, and
they don't care about user libs (short of breaking *some* APIs/ABIs). I've
done Linux kernel work on both Debian and RHEL/CentOS. The only difference
was what command I ran to recreate the initrd (mkinitramfs vs. mkinitrd,
IIRC). Illumos has all these libs and utilities in the tree [*]. This
leads to various interdependencies. Sure Linux has its fair share of
kernel/user dependencies, but since they are separate projects they tend to
not be version locked. On the other hand, since Illumos has everything in
the same tree, it kind of encourages "private" interface changes. They are
private only in the sense of staying within the gate.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, Linux is developed in more modular way
and the distros collect the pieces slap their sticker on and upload the
ISOs. Since everything is more "modular" from the beginning, distro
construction is easier.
Hear, hear. I had to wrap my head around that difference and just gave
up on trying to build my own. The argument for certain bits of
'userland' being part of the tree was that the whole toolchain would be
tested whereas you do not get that in Linux distributions and sometimes
you get "train wrecks" (sometimes intentional - e.g. Redhat Linux 7.0)
but in the end they mostly paved the way for improvement and lots of
differentiation.
Take your pick. Make a standard that has served Solaris well for many
years or further modularize and join the Linux mess of multiple
packaging systems (we're not there yet but the potential is there),
different startup systems/scripts (not that anybody would replace SMF)
and perhaps more competition/contribution which apparently seems to be
the case for Linux. The feeling of not making smartos or omnios a
reference and loping off systemv printing appears to support further
modularization.
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