Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cbmvax!uunet!mtxinu!ed
From: ed@mtxinu.COM (Ed Gould)
Newsgroups: comp.os.mach
Subject: Re: Mach on Sparcs...important questions...
Message-ID: <1991Mar15.075944.25174@mtxinu.COM>
Date: 15 Mar 91 07:59:44 GMT
References: <1991Mar12.214841.6274@cs.umn.edu>
Reply-To: ed@mtxinu.COM (Ed Gould)
Organization: mt Xinu, Berkeley
Lines: 34

>-Is there a supported version of Mach for the SparcStations?

Not so far as I know.  It's running at CMU, but I don't know of
any support.  I'm not even sure if they're distributing it yet.

>-Is there a C++ compiler that works on Mach?

Gcc is the C compiler used for Mach on 386s.  If there's a SPARC
gcc, I would expect it to work fine with Mach.  The same should
apply to g++ (even though it's not quite C++).

>-Does Xwindopws and Motif run on Mach?Has anyone tried it?

X certainly does.  I don't personally know of Motif running on Mach
outside OSF, but I wouldn't expect any problems.

>-How does Mach deal with non-reentrant libraries (eg: C libraries)?

There is a parallelized version of the C library for use with the
cthreads package (the only high-level interface available for the
thread stuff).  It's linked in with -lc_par; there are also tests in
the standard .h files for the symbol _PARALLEL_LIBRARIES.  If it's
defined, then the headers are compiled for parallel execution.

Many of the other libraries have not been parallelized.  For example,
I recently wrote a multi-threaded application using curses.  I
wrote wrappers for all of the curses routines, using cthreads
locks to serialize calls to curses.  It's crude, but it's easy and
it works.
-- 
Ed Gould                    mt Xinu, 2560 Ninth St., Berkeley, CA  94710  USA
ed@mtxinu.COM		    +1 415 644 0146

"I'll fight them as a woman, not a lady.  I'll fight them as an engineer."