Roland Mainz wrote:
Do you have any idea who may be interested in implementing the proposal below ?
No, I don't, unfortunately. I get the feeling though that it is an idea whose time has come.
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [osol-discuss] RFE: Replace /usr/css/bin/make with "dmake" inSolaris/OpenSolaris Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2006 03:14:28 +0100 From: "Roland Mainz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
...
A small proposal for discussion: RFE: Replace (Open-)Solaris's /usr/ccs/bin/make with "dmake" (from Sun Studio 11) * Why would it be usefull to replace /usr/ccs/bin/make with "dmake" ? - "dmake" allows "parallel", "distributed" and "grid" (e.g. distributed via grid) builds, making it a perfect application for Sun's new multicore chips such as Niagara1/2 + Rock, dual-core Opterons and racks filled with Sun machines (e.g. in either "distributed" or "grid" mode).
My team already has anecdotal experience that builds on niagara boxen take ~20% of the time that they do on US-IV machines. This, we like!
- Jörg Schilling said a while ago that "dmake" and "make" are quite similar (and I guess maybe even share the same codebase): http://groups.google.com/group/comp.unix.solaris/browse_frm/thread/cdbe46c1bd8bf40b/e413cb17650f4c53?lnk=st&q=dmake+make+solaris+j%C3%B6rg+schilling&rnum=2&hl=en#e413cb17650f4c53 Originally it made sense to charge customer for the advanched functionality in "dmake" (compared to the normal "make" in Solaris) - but now Sun Studio 11 is available for "free" - so there is no need to have two versions of "make" floating around.
I agree.
- Having only one version of "make" around in Solaris/Studio products will likely lower the engineering costs in the long term.
Definitely. And we as a company do not like to spend our money on duplication of effort.
- Sun did already lots of efforts to enhance the parallelism in Solaris, including the introduction of the all-new SMF startup system which starts services in parallel. Stuffing "dmake" at /usr/ccs/bin/make's place would just be the next logical step to explore parallelism in Solaris.
A bit of a long bow to draw, but I get the point. We are in general moving from serial to parallel execution of just about everything.
- Sun is moving to a product line where almost every computer has multicore chips. Having a "make" binary which makes use of such a feature would be quite usefull (if anyone from Sun is looking for a business case... :-) ). For example the Niagara-based T1000/T2000 machines would get another usefull application - for "free". - The switch may be quite cheap to implement (looking at engineering time) - "dmake" already exists, is maintained and fully documented.
Now look, you're going to have to stop stating the obvious here! JimG/Bonnie/StephenH/.... Roland is right - we should make this happen, and sooner rather than later. I give this proposal my +1 seal of approval.
* "Contra" arguments: - Testing needs to be done whether dmake is 100% backwards-compatible to /usr/ccs/bin/make (except that there is new functionality)
We have regression testing fiends in Ireland PerfPIT. I doubt that this would be a real problem.
- Lawyers will have to check the dmake sources.
*shrug* actually, I think it'll be _engineers_ who check the dmake source. One who are suitably qualified and experienced.
- Sun Studio's value will decrease since another functionality gets integrated into the base operating system.
One might argue that since Sun Studio has a $0 cost, that this doesn't really matter. best regards, James C. McPherson -- Solaris Datapath Engineering Data Management Group Sun Microsystems _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
