>> Is problem with lacking of engineers? I know that Solaris >> family is very reliable, OpenSolaris a little bit less while >> build are provided on 'as is' basis but I'm a little bit concerned >> how whole OS is being developed. We will come to the point >> where there will be no solution for errors we make now, because >> many thing would rely on that in the future. > > Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you here but actually the engineers from > Sun that work on Solaris are the same Sun engineers working on > OpenSolaris, there is no difference. > > If you're seeing bugs (and memory leaks classify as bugs), the best > thing to do is file bugs so that the engineers in question will know > about the issues and work on addressing them.
My observation is not based on current bugs. Personally, I do bug fixing as much as I could contributing on that way on os.o. I wanted to start one wider conversation because I think that some of consolidations are in such state that maybe we will never stop bug fixing process. I mean we will come to the state when one bug fix causes couple another bugs. For example, let we observe Xorg consolidation, based on X Window System. This source code tree evolved over the time in such different ways that now it comes to the critical point where it couldn't be fixed anymore. What we need? We need some Senior Developers conference to start to think how to make X Window System more comfortable for programmers, even if that means developing completely new Windowing System. Way how it approach to graphics card, sound card, etc. these days looks like fixing sinking ship, really. We need more organized architecture, well integrated yet modular, to allow that each hardware vendor write just one object module to serve as a driver for each Implementation of X Window System, we need that each OS vendor provide one module to be able to fully integrate X Window System, etc. Basically we need new architecture who is able to meet with demands of current software developers and, more important, future needs. This way, we could escape spending enourmous bug fixing time, especially sometimes when it looks sometime pointless. Most of SUN's engineers live in Silicon Valley. In its center is Stanford University, PARC (former Xerox PARC) - base centers for many of today's technologies. Lots of very smart people are there. Prof. Donald Knuth, Prof. Pratt, etc., are among some of them, for example. I'm strong follower of Prof. Knuth's Literature Programming concept. Code should be clear yet well documented at the same time. Today biggest challenge is not 'code which could be compiled on each platform' but 'code which could be understood by each engineer'. These concepts, among with reliable new architecture of new Window System could save many development time and costs in the future yet bring to many homes lots of great well documented code and make pleasure understanding it and make improvements which in turn again could bring more free code to Sun. By the way, I know that Solaris, OpenSolaris and SXDE teams are actually same group of engineers:). > The reason you're going to see more issues in OpenSolaris is that it's > being developed at the bleeding edge. Commits into the various > consolidation are being pushed into the package repository every two > weeks. And though quote a bit of testing occurs prior to changes being > made available in the repository, there is certainly more issues than > we like that are discovered after the software is made available more > widely. > >> I spoke with some people holding PhD in CS who are working >> for Sun couple months ago - they are really doing their job >> on a highly professional way, even they have nearly 60 years! >> Their job is related to Sun kernel and performance tools, and >> maybe this is the reason why this part of OpenSolaris is >> state-of-the-art for the Xorg consolidation. >> >> My idea with this post is to start conversation what we could do >> to create more reliable environment and provide reliable road-map >> in order to secure error-free software development? > > The development environment is actually fairly well defined - it's > called the Common Build Environment although I admit that its > definition doesn't seem to be clearly documented on opensolaris.org. > >> P.S:By the way, why we can't use Sun compiling tools instead of >> GCC? GCC provides to as at least twice slower code than Sun compilers, >> according to my small calculations. > > The majority of OpenSolaris is compiled using the Sun Studio 12 > toolchain although there are a few things compiled with GCC. I would like to know more about Common Build Enviroment more, if possible. When I wrote about SunStudio - I meant by that I would like to see more third-party applications ported to OpenSolaris via SunStudio toolchain instead GCC. That's all from me in this email. I hope I was useful. Uros Nedic _________________________________________________________________ Share your memories online with anyone you want. http://www.microsoft.com/middleeast/windows/windowslive/products/photos-share.aspx?tab=1 _______________________________________________ indiana-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/indiana-discuss
