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From: whm@arizona.edu (Bill Mitchell)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: multiple-machine executables for Suns?
Message-ID: <1857@megaron.arizona.edu>
Date: Wed, 5-Aug-87 05:33:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: megaron.1857
Posted: Wed Aug  5 05:33:46 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 7-Aug-87 06:55:19 EDT
References: <1853@megaron.arizona.edu> <12646@sol.hi.UUCP> <24871@sun.uucp>
Organization: U of Arizona CS Dept, Tucson
Lines: 50

Well, I've certainly got some interesting responses to my article, but it seems
that some persons are thinking in terms of using this format across machines
of various vendors and they ennumerate every machine they can think of and
say: "Ok, so with 50 differents executables in file, are you still not worried
about the disk space?"  Doing this sort of thing with software from different
vendors is a larger problem, since for best results you'd really need identical
sources.  The Suns seem like a good thing to think about initially, since
binaries are not interchangable, but sources are identical.

I should say that my interest in this is from the standpoint of system
administration; not software development.  We have three different types of
VAXs, but the suite of locally installed software is basically identical
across all the VAXs.  This is trivial with rdist -- we compile on one
machine and distribute to the others.  Users can do the same thing with their
personal bins.

On the Suns however, if you want to have software on Sun-2s and Sun-3s, you
can compile Sun-2 binaries and run them on Sun-3s, but you miss out on some
of the good 68020 instructions.  Or, you can install things twice and I'll
admit that this is more of a nuisance and psychologial problem than anything
else, but how many sites are really compulsive about this?  I'd guess that
most administrative domains with VAXs and Suns have matching software on their
VAXs (if they've heard of rdist), and are running Sun-2 binaries on Sun-3s
or have non-matching software on Sun-2s and Sun-3s.  (If this is not the case
for you -- mail me!  I'll envy your discipline.)

Guy Harris:

Regarding Sun software distributions, I think that distributing binaries
for only one machine type is perfectly suitable, but is that a reason for not
having the capability to have multiple-machine executables?

Also, it seems that compiling a binary for N machines *is* simpler than
compiling N binaries for N machines.  Consider:

	cc -o /usr/local/newprog -Msun2 -Msun3 -Msun4 newprog.c

versus:
	cc -o /r/sun2/usr/local/newprog -Msun2 newprog.c
	cc -o /r/sun3/usr/local/newprog -Msun3 newprog.c
	cc -o /r/sun4/usr/local/newprog -Msun4 newprog.c

I also believe that Sun does not introduce incompatiblities to sell new
machines, but incompatibility surely has an effect on sales.

Keep those notes coming!

					Bill Mitchell
					whm@arizona.edu
					{allegra,cmcl2,ihnp4,noao}!arizona!whm