On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 11:59 AM, Brian Smith <br...@briansmith.org> wrote: > Jason King wrote: >> As I think has been mentioned before, I seriously doubt if you talk to >> most any UNIX user they are one bit about GNU grep vs Solaris grep vs >> BSD grep (or gnu tar vs solaris tar vs bsd tar vs star). What they >> care about is 'grep -r works' 'tar -xvzf works' etc. > > Exactly. The functionality is what is important to end-users, not the > implementation, as long as the implementation doesn't cause problems. > Unfortunately, the current implementation *does* cause problems, especially > for users who are trying to learn/use Solaris and OpenSolaris at the same > time. > > If a GNU utility is a proper superset of the Solaris version, would patches > to replace the Solaris version with the GNU version be accepted? Or, is > there some kind of rule that says that all Solaris functionality must be > present without depending on any GNU-licensed software? > > Would patches to the Solaris tar to add "tar zj", automatic support for > *un*tarring GNU tar archives, and manual support for creating GNU tar > archives be accepted? Would a patch to add "grep -r" to solaris grep be > accepted? Would patches to add GNU long option names to the Solaris userland > utilities be accepted? > > If so, then I think it would be best to find the top 5-10 most requested GNU > userland features (e.g. "tar z") and implement them in the Solaris userland > ASAP. This would give almost guaranteed 100% backwards compatibility with > previous Solaris versions and "good enough" compatibility with Linux. > > I also think that the improvements to packaging substantially reduce the > need for some Linux compatibility. For example, fewer people are going to be > affected by the difference between Solaris make and GNU make because fewer > people will have to run make to build their own packages.
I think it's a matter of which is easier to maintain. My understanding is the GNU utilities aren't interested in OS-specific features, so NFSv4 ACLs, etc would have to be maintained separately (i.e. they won't accept the patches). On the other hand other feature deltas might be a different story. _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
