Alan DuBoff wrote: >On Thursday 01 December 2005 04:52 am, Gary Gendel wrote: > > >>A radical idea... >> >>How about putting solaris in /usr/basis, gnu in /usr/gnu, etc. Put nothing >>in /usr/bin except links to the commands you really want with the names you >>really want. Personally I think this wouldn't work, because of the >>expectations of /usr/bin. >> >> > >Unfortunately, this doesn't work for the bulk of users that don't know which >one they want, they will just expect tar to be a part of the system. Linux >has it and it's a clone of UNIX after all. It should just be there and work. > > > >>So, a second suggestion is to create /usr/<role> directories with links to >>/usr/bin /usr/bin/bin, etc. This way the role specifies what >>customizations the admin wants users to have. Something like the >>partitioning of /usr/bin vs /usr/sbin. >> >> > >More cruft and fragmentation with Solaris/OpenSolaris by doing so. > > > >>I liken this to /etc/init.d and the /etc/rc?.d links where the admin >>chooses what service he wants to start and under what condition to start >>it. >> >> > >Then they need to have their PATH set properly. It's cruft. > > > Exactly. This was the point I was trying to make. Splintering OpenSolaris into Sun/Gnu/Ucb/Whatever is just plain self destructive. What I would like is to have a standard system with expected results for commands. There should be a standard set of utilities that always exist and augment it with additional commands as needed.
When Sun went from SunOS to Solaris, I fell into the trap of still using the ucb commands for everything. I finally moved on to sysV commands. However, where I work still uses ucb and makes it very frustrating. My favorite editor is a lightweight emacs clone, but I forced myself to learn enough vi for those times that emacs wasn't available because vi is always there on unix variants. It saved my neck a number of times. If we don't provide a set of programs that provide expected results on all distros we're just asking for trouble. >>I too would like a single tar, but I also know that because of the >>differences in implementation I need more than one. Sometimes I need to >>pull out gtar because it's the only thing that will extract something >>generated by gtar. This message posted from opensolaris.org >> >> > >Why do you need more than one? We should have one solid working version that >does what we want. I use gtar because I like compression. It's a habit, and I >just use /usr/sfw/bin/gtar. I would rather just use tar and not have to worry >about which one I use. > > I agree it would be nice to have a compliant version that always works. The sysV tar breaks on me when there is enough levels of hierarchy or long enough names. It needs to be replaced if it doesn't work. I hope that star doesn't suffer like tar does. As a community we should define what should be in the standard core distribution. If people prefer replacements then they should understand the implications of their action. Gary _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
