Keith> What Alan was saying is that once a definitive list of differences
Keith> exists, it should be possible to implement a clean set of extensions
Keith> to ksh93 for backward compatibility; that implementation could then be
Keith> used by Solaris and included with OpenSolaris for other distributions
Keith> to use as well.
Roy> No, we cannot work that way. OpenSolaris has to lead Solaris in all
Roy> respects, including the development of revisions to existing executables.
Roy> The code has to go into OpenSolaris first, developed to the point where
Roy> it is compatible, and then used by Solaris in some future release. The
Roy> folks building the Solaris distribution are fully capable of writing a
Roy> shell script that selectively chooses what to include in Solaris based
Roy> on Sun's business requirements.
Roy> Solaris cannot be placed in a position where it determines the contents
Roy> of OpenSolaris. That is a dead-end exercise of tossing code over the
Roy> wall whenever Sun sees fit, which is the antithesis of what we are
Roy> trying to do with the OpenSolaris communities.
I have two problems (or potential problems) with your assertions.
The first is that all the mechanisms which you rail against are in fact
how things work now. Your statement of how things should work matches my
understanding of how things ought to work in the *long* term, but we have
a lot of short- and medium-term work to do before we get there, and much
of that work may be somewhat challenging. So we need to recognize that the
development processes for Solaris in the past to a large extent continue
into the present and can only change so quickly in the near future.
The second is that you sound[1] awfully inflexible. While it is good to have
such noble goals, given where we are, being too rigid in the short term may
not be a Good Thing. So I would encourage flexibility and open-mindedness
as we try to move from the dark past thru the dim present to the (hopefully)
bright future.
-- John
[1] I fully recognize that e-mail is a difficult medium for communicating
certain thoughts and feelings; apologies if I am inferring a different
tone that you intended. :-)
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