Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!sdd.hp.com!hp-pcd!hpfcso!mjs From: mjs@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Marc Sabatella) Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp Subject: Re: Switching from Sun to HP: some general questions Message-ID: <7370359@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM> Date: 9 Apr 91 23:28:28 GMT References: Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Fort Collins, CO, USA Lines: 109 I work for HP, but am not an official spokesperson. Take my comments accordingly: >My main concern is about HPUX. My second-hand impression of it is >that it's based on some old version of System V, and that it's a bit >old-fashioned and non-standard, and generally not quite as good as >SunOS. Is this a fair assessment? Obviously this is subjective. The sources to HP-UX come from SVR2 as well as BSD 4.2, and have had a *lot* of work done by HP. The claims of "nonstandard" mainly come from people who equate "standard" with BSD and/or SunOS. The 700's will come with some flavor of HP-UX 8.0, which will include shared libraries, X11R4, Motif 1.1, and most other "modern" features. Missing are some BSD functions from the C library, and some things that require the separate AT&T toolchest license (I think nmake falls into this class). >Does HPUX support long filenames, symlinks, job control, sockets, NFS? >Is it POSIX compliant? Yes on all counts, depending on how you define "POSIX compliant" - there are many POSIX specs, and various different suites to measure compliance. I don't know our full story, but I know that 8.0 contains a lot of code in the commands, libraries, and kernel for drafts 1 and 2. >Does HPUX provide lpr or does it only provide lp? lp - but the spooler accepts requests from Berkeley "lpr". Is this actually an issue? They are plug compatible in many cases. >Somebody said that OSF/1 was going to be available by the end of this >year. Does this mean that a production version suitable for end users >will be available by then? Does this mean HP will be shipping OSF/1 >as their standard OS by then? Will OSF/1 run HPUX binaries? The OSF picture is not clear. OSF itself has said they don't intend to OSF/1 to be for end users - for developers only. At least that's what I heard. Don't believe everything you hear, particularly about OSF. Don't expect HP-UX to go away any time soon, though. >Is BSD 4.4 likely to be available? If so, will the machine dependent >parts be freely redistributable? Much of the BSD 4.4 development is being done on HP machines, so the answer to the first question is undoubtedly yes. You'll have to contact BSD as to the "freely distributatble" stuff - I don't think HP has any involvement with the port. >How good (fast, robust) is HP's implementation of X? Does it include >all of X11R4? Is it reasonably close to X11R4? Does the MIT X11R4 >distribution build on a 9000/730? Starting with 8.0, it is standard X11R4, except I don't think we include some of the contributed stuff that we don't get a chance to test. People have indeed successfully compiled the MIT stuff directly. As for speed, the posted benchmarks should speak for themselves - the 730's X performance blows everything else away. >Does it connect directly to thinwire ethernet? Is >HP hardware generally reliable? Yes and yes - the reason many people couldn't get 400's for a while is that the US Army was snatching them up to use in tanks in the gulf. [ re: writable CD-ROM ] Perhaps they were referring to the optical disk and the autochanger. These are not CD-ROM per se. Your assessment is otherwise accurate, if we are talking about the same thing - it is awkward for use as a backup device (but it is not low capacity - the autochanger basically gives you removable media and automatically switches between I believe 32 surfaces. It can be mounted. We use it for archiving sources and build environments. >Are gcc and g++ available? Yes, but are nowhere near as good as HP's in terms of generated code quality. I've heard factors of 2 for gcc vs HP's cc on the 700. >How about gdb? What debugging >format does HP use? Is it COFF, stabs, or something peculiar to HP? >If the last, is it documented? Does HP offer dbx? HP uses a proprietary debug format, and a debugger called "xdb". "xdb" is somewhat more powerful than "dbx", but some people find it harder to get used to (it is not as freindly). "xdb"'s biggest advantage is its unrivaled C++ support - if you use HP's C++. >How reliable is the standard C compiler? Are the higher optimization >levels sufficiently reliable to be usable? Is ANSI C included with >HPUX or available separately? Available separately, I think. There will always be stories of optimizers breaking code, and it is hard to get objective numbers. The higher optimization levels include some interprocedural stuff, so in addition to any problems with the optimizer, it uncovers new classes of bugs in programs being optimized (much in the same way register allocators found a lot of people's uninitialized variables, the hard way). >In general, how easy is it to port free software to HPUX? Most things >seem to port to SunOS with little effort. To what extent is this true >of HPUX? If they don't have BSD dependencies, they port fine. That is my gut impression. -------------- Marc Sabatella (marc@hpmonk.fc.hp.com) Disclaimers: 2 + 2 = 3, for suitably small values of 2 Bill and Dave may not always agree with me