Garrett D'Amore wrote: > > 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.
Uhhrgh. Please don't try to "patch" the Bourne shell to support features like "$( ... )" etc. - that will likely blow-up all the "configure" etc. scripts which use such constructs to probe for POSIX vs. older shells (and it's not fully backwards-compatible either (e.g. either you honor the backwards-compatibilty _or_ you upgrade /usr/bin/sh to the next higher level (POSIX ?) ... but please don't create something like a seven-legged cross-breed Bourne/POSIX chimera where half the legs are gammy... it's smell will only cause more problems than we already have with the shells in Solaris... ;-( )). ---- Bye, Roland -- __ . . __ (o.\ \/ /.o) [EMAIL PROTECTED] \__\/\/__/ MPEG specialist, C&&JAVA&&Sun&&Unix programmer /O /==\ O\ TEL +49 641 7950090 (;O/ \/ \O;) _______________________________________________ opensolaris-code mailing list [email protected] http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/opensolaris-code
