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From: std-unix@ut-sally.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.std.unix
Subject: Re: node name
Message-ID: <7003@ut-sally.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 29-Jan-87 18:21:44 EST
Article-I.D.: ut-sally.7003
Posted: Thu Jan 29 18:21:44 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 31-Jan-87 01:52:24 EST
References: <6788@ut-sally.UUCP> <6977@ut-sally.UUCP>
Organization: IEEE P1003 Portable Operating System for Computer Environments Committee
Lines: 22
Approved: jsq@sally.utexas.edu

From: guy%gorodish@Sun.COM (Guy Harris)
Date: 29 Jan 87 06:53:29 GMT
Reply-To: guy@sun.UUCP (Guy Harris)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View

>Increasing the length can still cause binary compatibility problems, but
>there are (ugly) ways of dealing with binary compatibility.

Not even that ugly; yes, they leave loose bits of crud floating
around in your kernel, but most UNIX distributions these days have
lots of this sort of loose crud.  It's aesthetically unpleasant, but
it beats the hell out of supporting aesthetically- and
technically-unpleasant interfaces because you can't declare a flag day and
nuking those interfaces.

Most, if not all, implementations based on UNIX could just assign a
new system call number to a new improved "uname" and leave the old
one around with its old number for binary compatibility.  You can
write a library that contains a "uname" that uses the old call, or
uses the new call and throws away the extra characters.

Volume-Number: Volume 9, Number 37