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From: alek@spatial.com ( Alek O. Komarnitsky )
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp
Subject: Re: HP-UX features
Message-ID: <1991Jun2.005631.22432@spatial.com>
Date: 2 Jun 91 00:56:31 GMT
References: <1991May24.152621.9993@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu> <1670018@hpcc01.HP.COM>
Sender: usenet@spatial.com
Organization: Spatial Technology, Inc. (Boulder, Colorado)
Lines: 35

In article <1670018@hpcc01.HP.COM> okamoto@hpcc01.HP.COM (Jeff Okamoto) writes:
>petersor@egr.msu.edu (Rick Peterson) writes:
>
>> But, without giving it a lot of thought, here is a small list of problems.
>> [much deleted]
>>	Second, since HP software comes in update format it is impossible
>>	to do anything at all different from the standard install.
>
>Your point is valid, but what did you have in mind, doing something different?

Another recent posting partly answered this question by stating that the tape
is in tar format, so one can strip things off and do with them as one pleases.
But does the software itself support non-standard installation locations?

The difficulties we run into is supporting multiple versions of the
same software - specifically C++. Although one can write shell scripts that
redefine the "standard places" for stuff (such as libC.a, cfront, etc.), it's
not an all togather elegent solution, and flat-out doesn't seem to work in
some situations (end.o [needed for -g] can be found elsewhere with C++2.0,
but C++2.1 seems to insist on it being in /usr/CC/lib/end.o).

A better (but more difficult for HP) solution would be to built in support for
multiple versions, with (perhaps) symlinks to the "default" ones - ala Sun's
support of multiple diskless OS's (but it took 'em a while to get there).

Remember that us software vendors are between a rock and hard place. We need
to support our customers who delay upgrading (and there are a LOT of 'em),
but we also want to be able to use the latest and greatest.

Alek Komarnitsky                                      303-449-0649
Software Tools Manager, Spatial Technology, Inc.      2425 55th Street, Bldg A
alek@spatial.com                                      Boulder, CO 80301-5704

P.S. And will there be a rdate/date command in HP-UX8.0 that allows one to
     set the time to the nearest second?     versus nearest minute!  :-(