Bruno Jargot wrote:
> I am still very sceptical because most comments I see from people with
> a @sun.com address talk about a Real Bourne Shell or Backward
> Compatibility and not about the Reality that all other competitors
> have evolved their /bin/sh much further with POSIX as minimum. IMO the
> discussion is not balanced, too many people look backwards and ignore
> the Reality of software development and evolution. Solaris is the last
> of the Unix operating system which is under active development and
> ships the Real Bourne Shell as /bin/sh. This worries me and looks like
> a bad omen about the future of Opensolaris.
None of Sun's commercial competitors offer the same level of binary
compatibility. The "Binary Compatibility Guarantee" is something Sun
takes very seriously, and many many customers and ISVs depend on it.
(Heck, even _I_ depend on it. I have binary device drivers that I wrote
and compiled on Solaris 8, and users are using them happily on Solaris 10.)
I've worked with Solaris, NetBSD, and Linux. And I can tell you that
commercial users and ISVs _hate_ the anarchy and constant churn that
systems like Linux create. Its almost impossible to ship a binary
product/package that works on Linux without having to respin it with the
each update.
Now, I grant you that it may be time to take a close look at the
variations between /bin/sh, and a real POSIX conforming shell. It might
even be time to change the "default" login shell.
But we cannot easily remove /bin/sh (or replace it with a "better", yet
"incompatible" shell), any more than we can easily remove /usr/ucb/*
(and those are some _really_ crufty tools!) Too many people will complain.
Sun makes long term commitments to its customers. This is a _very_
different case than Linux, where pretty much (often arbitrary) change is
forced down users throats without advance warning, and with little
concern about the impact on users and developers. Even with large
enterprises (IBM) funding lots of Linux development, it still has yet to
grow out of its hobbyist roots.
Now, NetBSD is a totally different beast. They provide a lot of
backwards compatibility, and generally any incompatible change that
might cause breakage is heavily frowned upon. There have been
exceptions, but they are few and far between. (The NetBSD "way" of
providing compatibility is different than Solaris' however. I can
provide more info if you're really curious.)
-- Garrett
>
> Bruno
>
> On 3/7/07, Alan Coopersmith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> You're about a year too late on suggesting this - the ksh93-integration
>> project is well underway.
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