> IHMO, if OpenSolaris based distros go the way Linux > distros went, then > developing software for OpenSolaris based distros > would have the same > problem as developing on Linux distros. There has to > be a "common base > ". For now, AFAIK it is Solaris 10. Basically any > binary which runs in > Solaris 10 *will* run in SXCE, SXDE and *probably* > the latest > OpenSolaris build.
Well, maybe any binary that uses only stable interfaces; I think a good test is if it passes appcert(1). > OTOH, if SUN chooses to maintain ABI compatibility in > the future as > well, all FOSS Solaris developers would have a great > target platform to > develop on. (Which is pretty much the case now). > > To summarize IMHO, SUN would be getting even more > FOSS developers' > attentions by committing to maintaining ABI > compatibility, if they want to. AFAIK, they _are_ committed to ABI compatibility (in a very defined sense, i.e. for interfaces defined as stable in the man pages), for their Solaris distro. OpenSolaris code supports and mostly implements that, but with alternative distros based on OpenSolaris, there's always the possibility that some might break certain aspects of ABI compatibility (esp. if one considers that to include pathnames to certain executables, so that system(), exec*(), or popen() calls work exactly the same), or might stick to an older kernel or (like Nexenta) offer at least the option of a very different user-land command set. So portability between distros will be up to the distros themselves, and while I think most people might prefer that non-Sun distros either stay compatible for applications (different install and administration, and extra stuff are fine), or at the very least make a point of being clear about it if, under what options, and to what degree they wouldn't be compatible, I'm not aware of anything that would actually enforce this. In fact, I wouldn't mind seeing a formal definition of a compatible distribution (should run everything that passes appcert on the Solaris distro derived from the same OpenSolaris snapshot?), and some logo or whatever that a compatible distribution (give or take permitted and documented exceptions) would be allowed to use, so that it would be easy to let people know which distros took pains that they should support the same pre-built binaries, and which might not. There might of course be distros that didn't care about compatibility, like a really stripped down distro using busybox or such for an embedded system; a lot of stuff that works on most other OpenSolaris based distros might not work on them, and wouldn't be expected to. But if they offered compatibility for some subset of the ABI, it might be nice to have a way to test for that... This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
