>On 10/31/07, Alan Coopersmith <alan.coopersmith at sun.com> wrote: >> I. Szczesniak wrote: >> No one has ever promised /usr/gnu/bin would be POSIX compliant. > >I disagree. POSIX violations are BUGS and have to be fixed, otherwise >interoperability between systems is completely gone. Or are you saying >that Sun intends to ship the GNU tools as cheap 'outsourced' >alternative to the Sys5 tools and then refuse support, even in >violation of our support contract? In that case I better start >archiving this discussion that our legal department can review this if >Sun refuses to fulfill the support contact requirements.
No, that is not a violation of POSIX at all. Currently, Solaris ship a number of different implementations of different programs; check out /usr/bin/* vs /usr/xpg4/bin and /usr/xpg6/bin. Only the latter two are POSIX[1] compliant; POSIX compliant violations in the /usr/bin tools are not bugs. Compliance is about "offering a compliant environment"; not making all environments compliant. That is impossible because we sometimes have conflicting goals (such as the interpretation of rm -f -i in SysV vs XPG4). The GNU environment would be "GNU compliant"; and not at all related to other standards. Some people apparently want the GNU tools and fixing them to be POSIX compliant might actually break them for those customers. I think your lawyers will explain that to you also. Casper [1] POSIX is used here loosely in the meaning of "or the specific relevant UNIX or UNIX related standard"
