> You know what, I totally disagree with this move: > Don't make Solaris Linux like, BUT teach us Linux > guys the Solaris way. As I read here again and again > the "POSIX way" - what ever that means, at least I > don't know, and I am sure many "young"(as in age and > as in new to Unix) Linux users don't know,too -.
http://www.unix.org/single_unix_specification/ (requires sign-up) The Single Unix Specification is actually a superset of POSIX; the POSIX standard by itself is from IEEE and probably not freely available, but is effectively duplicated by US Government specifications and by ISO/IEC standards; for a body coordinating updates for POSIX and the core of the Single Unix Specification, see http://www.opengroup.org/austin/ This means that where the standards says "undefined", it's best to consider any such feature or behavior (if there is any consistent behavior on any platform) as non-portable, and when it says "implementation defined", that means there may be optional implementation specific behavior but again, if you want maximum portability, don't go there. At least as much of the discipline in writing code that's both portable and maintainable is in what one leaves out. That doesn't necessarily preclude friendliness or features, but it means that everything is done deliberately; by comparison some open source seems to consider it enough that it's open, and aspire to becoming a defacto rather than a documented standard. It also means that not everyone cares about source availability except insofar as it clearly connects with an improved experience and lower prices. This is about what's been demonstrated to work, not about philosophy. So the "we don't need no steenkin' ABI*" model just doesn't cut it, and backwards compatibility (not breaking existing binaries that confine themselves to documented-as-stable interfaces; and to some extent, that accomodating a new user base should not require either recoding or retraining by the established user base) is very important. It means that new features, whether as part of accomodating a changing user base or for any other reason, need to go through a consistent process, not just a couple of people convincing a single gatekeeper to accept them; in turn, that means lots of patience and arguments (which for years probably went on just as vigorously as any of the Linux mailing list flame fests, but until fairly recently were not a public spectacle). * http://www.darryl.com/badges/ This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
