Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!dptg!mtunb!dmt
From: dmt@mtunb.ATT.COM (Dave Tutelman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Use UNIX for MSDOS development?
Summary: How about a LAN?
Message-ID: <1649@mtunb.ATT.COM>
Date: 3 Sep 89 21:57:36 GMT
References: <21714@cup.portal.com> <4009@internal.Apple.COM>
Reply-To: dmt@mtunb.UUCP (Dave Tutelman)
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs - Middletown, NJ
Lines: 63

In article <4009@internal.Apple.COM> desnoyer@apple.com (Peter Desnoyers) writes:
>
>In my mind the best development environment for MSDOS (or other micros - 
>for instance Macintoshes) would be a cross-compiler running on a 
>fair-sized UNIX system, such as a big Sun or a VAX. 
	How about a distributed MSDOS environment on a LAN,
	using a UNIX-based file-server, such as AT&T's StarGROUP
	servers.  I've lived in such an environment, and can assure
	you that it works.

>Pluses:
>
>+ UNIX tools - sccs, make, awk, all those other fun things.
	There are MAKE and AWK clones available for MSDOS.
	Polytron makes an RCS-like source control system for DOS,
	that includes working from shared files on a file server.

	And, if the server is itself a UNIX box, you can run the
	UNIX utilities remotely if you don't like the DOS versions
	of the utilities.  For instance, you could have MSDOS scripts
	that remotely invoke SCCS on the server machine.

>+ (this is the big one) - you can put all the source - or at least the 
>current master version - in one place instead of having it scattered 
>across twice as many micros as you have programmers, half of them turned 
>off and not accessible from the net at any given time.
	Precisely!  And you get the same advantage from a LAN-based
	solution with the files on a server.

>+ the concept of developing on a machine that can crash in the middle of 
>running a make - or worse yet, while you are editing - is abhorrent. 
	My experience is that my UNIX environment crashes significantly
	more often than my DOS environment.  Most (but not all) the time
	its the access line rather than the UNIX system itself, but the
	deffect on my work is the same.  I'd rather do my stuff from a
	single machine that's right there.  And if I'm doing a make from
	the server, the partial products of the make don't get lost.

>+ and, finally, you're not trying to run some horribly buggy piece of 
>software on the machine that your latest, not-quite-backed-up-yet copy of 
>the source is resident on. After all, rest assured that in MS-DOS your 
>disk controller is just another unprotected address for your stray 
>pointers to search for.
	True enough, but access to the file server is much less chancy.
	Things have to be sane enough to be run the file access protocol
	correctly, in order to screw up the source accidentally.

UNIX is an excellent development environment.  But we are talking here
SPECIFICALLY about developing software to run under MSDOS.  The LAN-based
approach allows us to use the DOS-optimized development tools that
Borland, Microsoft, and others provide.  It also allows us to use
the UNIX tools when they are more appropriate.

I am biased.  I work at AT&T, in the organization that develops the
StarGROUP products.  But I'm also experienced; we use our products
in our process, and have had successful results.

+---------------------------------------------------------------+
|    Dave Tutelman						|
|    Physical - AT&T Bell Labs  -  Middletown, NJ		|
|    Logical -  ...att!mtunb!dmt				|
|    Audible -  (201) 957 6583					|
+---------------------------------------------------------------+