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From: martin@sdcsvax.UUCP (Bruce Martin)
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga
Subject: Amiganix
Message-ID: <1319@sdcsvax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 16-Jan-86 18:13:24 EST
Article-I.D.: sdcsvax.1319
Posted: Thu Jan 16 18:13:24 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 18-Jan-86 08:21:35 EST
Organization: EECS Dept. U.C. San Diego
Lines: 44
Keywords: Amiga, AmigaDos, Unix, portability

I would like to begin a discussion in this newsgroup of what it would 
take to make AmigaDos "feel" like Unix and how such a "feeling" could be 
cooperatively created by us in the public domain.  I begin the discussion by
saying what I think is needed:

1.  A Unix like shell supporting regular expression file name expansion,
    background execution, io redirection and pipes (see below).

2.  Public domain versions of important utility programs, with the same
    options. Namely, cat, ls, rm, mkdir, rmdir, mv, cp.  I have already
    renamed the AmigaDos equivalents of these programs but this is really 
    inadequate because they handle arguments and options differently.
    I particularly miss being able to operate on a list of files and a
    target directory:  cp *.c ../newver

3.  Lattice C already goes along way in providing many Unix system calls,
    i.e. open(), close(), read() ...  Missing, however, are pipe(), fork()
    and exec().  Having these calls would make building the shell easier.

    a)  pipe() is defintely needed.  A "pipe" device could be added to AmigaDos.

    b)  The Execute() call in AmigaDos is one of the weirdest system calls
	that I have ever seen.  The semantics of the si parameter are lunar.
	It probably would suffice for building a shell (???).  Or could
	LoadSeg() and CreateProc() be used to build fork() and exec()? 

Why I think we should discuss doing this?

     *)  For most of us, Unix is a nice environment for software development.
	 It's like family.  AmigaDos has similar concepts and power but
	 unfamiliar.

     *)  AmigaDos supports the Amiga specialized hardware.  Porting Unix or 
	 unix-like to Amiga, would require a lot of work to support the 
	 hardware.  Also living with AmigaDos lets us run the excellent packages
	 already produced for it. 

     *)  If Commodore folds and takes Amiga down with it, our $$$ are protected
	 because software targetted for Unix can be easily ported to the Amiga. 
	 (or at least public domain unix software, source included.)

     *)  1,2,3 above is probably not that much work if done cooperatively.

Comments, suggestions, discussion????