Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!harvard!caip!brl-adm!brl-smoke!gwyn From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn ) Newsgroups: net.unix,net.unix-wizards Subject: Re: 4BSD is dead??? Message-ID: <1551@brl-smoke.ARPA> Date: Fri, 20-Jun-86 16:20:25 EDT Article-I.D.: brl-smok.1551 Posted: Fri Jun 20 16:20:25 1986 Date-Received: Tue, 24-Jun-86 02:49:57 EDT References: <440@geowhiz.UUCP> <6778@utzoo.UUCP> <713@wjvax.wjvax.UUCP> <1361@brl-smoke.ARPA> <419@gvax.cs.cornell.edu> Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) ) Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD. Lines: 27 Xref: linus net.unix:7653 net.unix-wizards:15504 In article <419@gvax.cs.cornell.edu> jqj@gvax.UUCP (J Q Johnson) writes: >My guess is that incompatible UNIX versions will be with us as long as UNIX >is, but they will no longer be bsd vs SysV. This is quite true. My concern is not to preclude true value-added enhancements by vendors, but rather to obtain a guaranteed portable subset environment to support applications. Such an environment must be sufficiently rich to limit the need to reach outside it to variably- interfaced features. I think that the ANSI X3J11 C language standard (which specifies a large amount of the C library too) will go a long way toward this; IEEE 1003.n will cover much of the remaining specifically UNIX environment. Both of these have a good chance of becoming ISO standards. AT&T's SVID is nice too, but it suffers from being associated with a commercial entity (that is, it would be less hassle to specify ANSI/IEEE/ISO standards in a procurement contract). Much of the SVID is available now; IEEE 1003.1 is out for public review in the form of a "trial use" standard; and the ANSI X3J11 proposed C standard may be sent out for public review before the end of 1986. Fortunately all three standards agree quite closely with each other. The biggest problem I am aware of is that 4.3BSD as shipped by Berkeley is still far from compliance with these standards. This is the issue I would like to see satisfactorily addressed soon, at the source rather than individually by each BSD-based system vendor. (I volunteer to do some of the work; perhaps Sun would feed back some of their work to UCB, if Berkeley would agree to pick it up.)