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From: mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton)
Newsgroups: net.sources,net.unix,net.lang.c,net.unix-wizards
Subject: Re: QUERY: Coding convention
Message-ID: <80@cbosgd.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 8-Jul-84 00:18:17 EDT
Article-I.D.: cbosgd.80
Posted: Sun Jul  8 00:18:17 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 1-Jul-84 07:38:15 EDT
References: <793@ihuxx.UUCP>
Reply-To: mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbus
Lines: 28

In response to the query for a standard name for UNIX variants,
e.g. BSD, USG, etc, for ifdefs.

It seems to be traditional to use USG for SysIII/SysV versions
of UNIX and BSD for nBSD.  However, now that the marketplace
has settled down a bit, I'd like to propose a new convention.

Berkeley has settled on two names: 2BSD and 4BSD (there are
various releases, e.g. 2.9BSD, 4.2BSD, within these names).
2BSD seems to follow in the footsteps of 4BSD and can be distinguished
because of hardware differences.

AT&T has also settled on a name: System V.  It has releases,
System V, System V Release 2 (SVR2), etc.  Indeed, the name USG
(standing for Unix Support Group) no longer makes sense, since
the organization is now called the Unix System Development Lab
(USDL) and reorganizes often enough to make this name useless.

I propose we pick two names: BSD and SYSV.  This covers most of
the products out today, leaving out only V7 and System III based
products.  We could include V7 and SYSIII as two other names if
desired, although it isn't clear to me how long lived these systems
will remain without incorporating features from either 4BSD or SysV.

I would like to see these names automatically built into the C
preprocessor, along with the existing hardware names (vax, pdp11,
sun, unix).  Systems not having them in their cpp could add them
as -D flags in the makefiles.