Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!geoff
From: geoff@zoo.toronto.edu (Geoffrey Collyer)
Subject: Re: (C News) limit filesize and inews
Message-ID: <1991Jan6.071835.21072@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <3461@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu> <1991Jan6.004313.8792@zoo.toronto.edu> <3463@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu>
Date: Sun, 6 Jan 1991 07:18:35 GMT

Stan Barber:
> ... if you post code that should be widely
>usable and it doesn't run on the most popular varients of Unix available, then
>I have to question if that is due to the inability to get on a system to test
>the code or the "ivory tower attitude" that the varient is broken and the 
>providers of the varient should fix their code in order that your code should
>work.

I'm sorry; vendors are breaking once-working software at
ever-increasing speed.  Even if we wanted to, we could not possibly
keep up with the latest bugs in all the Unix variants in the field.
Furthermore, the unfortunate users of those broken Unixes are going to
have to get their suppliers to fix the bugs in order to compile lots of
software other than C News.  Working around the bugs in broken Unixes
merely clutters our code with workarounds and encourages users to not
report the bugs and vendors not to fix them.  The next non-trivial
program that someone wants to compile will require the same
workarounds that were needed for C News, ad infinitum.

As for ``features'' such as ulimit, administrators who set ulimits too
low are making the same sort of error as having too little swap space
or too little free space in /usr.
-- 
Geoff Collyer		utzoo!geoff, zoo.toronto.edu!geoff