Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!longway!std-unix From: std-unix@longway.TIC.COM (Moderator, John S. Quarterman) Newsgroups: comp.std.unix Subject: Standards Update (4 of 4): IEEE P1003 Message-ID: <115@longway.TIC.COM> Date: 24 Jan 88 17:22:36 GMT Reply-To: std-unix@uunet.uu.net Lines: 165 Approved: jsq@longway.tic.com (Moderator, John S. Quarterman) Standards Update An update on UNIX and C Standards Activities January 21, 1988 Written for the USENIX Association by Shane P. McCarron, NAPS Inc. Status of the IEEE P1003 Working Groups: - 1003.1 - System Services Interface The .1 working group has reached an interesting point in its life. Since the standard they have produced is now in final ballot and ballot resolution, the working group in effect has nothing more to do. At the December meeting they tried to decide what, if anything, should be done by this body in the future. Although no decision on this was made, many good options were suggested. Most promising among these is the design of a language independent description of POSIX. One of the requirements that ISO made of POSIX when it was adopted as a Draft Proposed Standard last fall was that at some point in the future it be described in such a way that they functionality could be understood without an understanding of the C language. ISO recognized that it was unrealistic to make this a requirement before adopting the standard, but felt that it was reasonably important. I feel that this is something the working group will be taking on soon after the Full Use Standard is approved by IEEE. - 1003.2 - Shell and Tools Interface The Shell and Tools group is operating under a very ambitious schedule. The National Bureau of Standards (NBS) has indicated that they are going to declare a Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) based on the command set in the .2 standard, and that they are going to do so in the summer of '88. This working group only started serious work 1 year ago, and has already produced a larger document than the .1 group did in 4. The group is working hard to make sure that the command set is locked down before the deadline being imposed by NBS. Unfortunately, this has the consequence that many decisions are being made as rapidly as possible. I am afraid that the resulting standard may be one that is IEEE P1003, January 21, 1988 Shane P. McCarron, NAPS Inc. Standards Update - 2 - USENIX Association flawed, if only because the group is moving forward too fast. On the other hand, the .1 group was guilty of exactly the opposite, and NBS pressure has forced that group to really get its act together. It has proven to be a boon there, and it may do so here as well. The Shell and Tools group has a milestone schedule something like: Date Milestone Mar '88 Command Selection frozen; 75% described. Jun '88 100% commands described; functional freeze Oct '88 Clean-up, slack; produce "mock ballot" for draft (#8); international signoff. Jan '89 Resolve mock objections; produce balloting draft (#9) Apr '89 Resolve ballot objections; produce final standard. Jul '89 Final standard approved by IEEE This may not appear to be all that hectic a pace, but I can assure you that it is. When I say that the commands are 100% described, it means that the current functionality of each command that has been included in the standard (a substantial part of the current "un*x" command set) is described in painful detail. The goal of the standard is to describe each command in such a way that a person who has never seen a un*x machine can write the commands from scratch. It's a lot of text. With about 75% of the commands in, and those being about 75% described (albeit incorrectly in some cases) the document is now approaching 400 pages. In a future report I will tell you just what is involved in a command description. We don't have the space this time :-) - 1003.3 - Testing and Verification This is another group that has been very active in the last year or so. They have the dubious honor of figuring out how to test that implementations of the .1 standard are actually conforming. Although the IEEE is IEEE P1003, January 21, 1988 Shane P. McCarron, NAPS Inc. Standards Update - 3 - USENIX Association not going to be providing any validation services or rating and systems, P1003 thought that it was important that they define what parts of the system should be tested in what ways. The .3 group seems to be on track for balloting within the next 6 to 9 months. There work is very far along, and a verification suite is already being worked on by the NBS based on the .3 assertion list about POSIX. Although the .3 document will not be as earth- shattering as POSIX, it is a still a very important step - actually showing how to test conformance to a standard at the same time you are defining one. - 1003.4 - Real Time Until recently, all the real time considerations in POSIX were being looked into by a /usr/group technical committee. Last fall that committee decided that their research was mature enough that they could actually start the work of producing a standard about it. The real time work promises to add much of the functionality that I and many others feel is absolutely necessary in POSIX. Things like semaphores, shared memory, and event processing. All of those inter- process communication things that were left out of the .1 standard because they just did not have the time. Unfortunately, there is quite a bit of dissension as to how all of these things should be implemented. Not just IPC, but also contiguous files, timers, and those things that a real time application would need to really be real time. After talking to some of the people who attended the December meeting, I would guess that this group has a long way to go. However, what will happen when they get there? At this time I'm guessing that the .4 document will be positioned as a supplement to the .1 standard. It should require no changes to the .1 standard, and will probably be a set of optional facilities, as job control and some others are already. When this standard is finally produced, it will answer many of the objections we have heard to POSIX all along. I am sure that it will be well received. Let's hope that it can be timely enough to be useful. IEEE P1003, January 21, 1988 Shane P. McCarron, NAPS Inc. Volume-Number: Volume 13, Number 5