Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!crdgw1!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!hemuli.tik.vtt.fi!tik.vtt.fi!tml From: tml@tik.vtt.fi (Tor Lillqvist) Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp Subject: Re: Switching from Sun to HP: some general questions Message-ID: Date: 9 Apr 91 14:37:38 GMT References: Sender: news@hemuli.tik.vtt.fi Organization: Technical Research Centre of Finland, Laboratory for Information Processing (VTT/TIK) Lines: 82 In-reply-to: jjc@jclark.UUCP's message of 8 Apr 91 12:38:40 GMT In article jjc@jclark.UUCP (James Clark) writes: First a little bit of background. I work mostly on free software (my project for the last few years has been GNU groff); I write mainly in C++. Many thanks for groff! It compiles and works fine with HP C++ (both s300/400 and s800). 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? Well, not really. The HP-UX kernel is as far as I know originally based on BSD4.2. The system call semantics have been changed to be SVID (and now, POSIX) conformant, though. User level programs are System V versions. As for standards, well... If you define "standard" as "SunOS" or "(pure) BSD," I guess HP-UX isn't standard. It does confirm to the *real* standards POSIX, X/Open etc, though. But you are right that SunOS does have some nice features that HP-UX hasn't got (yet). Like dynamic linking, enhanced ptrace(2), interesting new filesystem types, automounter... It's not fair to call these featrures "standards," though. On the other hand, the HP-UX approach to diskless workstations might be better than SunOS's. Does HPUX support long filenames, symlinks, job control, sockets, NFS? Is it POSIX compliant? Yes, yes. Sure. Does HPUX provide lpr or does it only provide lp? Does it support PostScript printers? It has lp, but with support for remote printing (both as client and server). You must put together your own PS interface model. (Trivial, just a small shell script, that could check if the stuff is already PS, and if not, pipe through the ascii-to-PS filter of your choice.) 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? Is the R5 distribution likely to? Do HP document their graphics hardware enough to port a window system? I guess HP-UX 8.0 will have X11R4. HP-UX 7.0 has X11R3, but you can get a X11R4 server and pre-compiled clients and libraries by ftp. Or compile X11R4 yourself. How does HP's 19'' monitor compare to the Trinitron that Sun ships? HP ships Trinitron monitors, too. Are gcc and g++ available? If not, do HP provide enough information about their architecture that somebody could port them? If so, is the code quality competitive with HP? There is a version of gcc for the Series 800 available from Utah. The code quality is not yet as good as that the HP compiler produces. 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? It's something peculiar to HP, and not documented :-(. HP doesn't offer dbx, but xdb, which is different, but at least as good. Then there is SoftBench, a whizzy Motif-based interface you probably will get much glossy material on... However, if you are short of resources (memory), remember that you can do almost anything SoftBench does "by hand." 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? Depends on how the writer of the free software interprets the word "standard." Most free software port fairly straightforward. X software usually compiles without changes. Some software depend heavily on the more obscure peculiarities of BSD or SunOS, and are thus more of a challenge. It's interesting to note that Andrew, however, seems to be easier to compile and run on HP-UX (on the Series 300, alas) than on SunOS. -- Tor Lillqvist, working, but not speaking, for the Technical Research Centre of Finland