Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!decvax!ucbvax!pasteur!ames!ll-xn!mit-eddie!apollo!mishkin
From: mishkin@apollo.uucp (Nathaniel Mishkin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo
Subject: Re: SR10 and me
Message-ID: <3a569abe.c366@apollo.uucp>
Date: 17 Feb 88 14:43:00 GMT
References: <8802090007.AA09431@ELI.CS.YALE.EDU> <1670@ssc-vax.UUCP>
Reply-To: mishkin@apollo.UUCP (Nathaniel Mishkin)
Organization: Apollo Computer, Chelmsford, MA
Lines: 70

In article <1670@ssc-vax.UUCP> benoni@ssc-vax.UUCP (Charles L Ditzel) writes:
>I too have not attended any of the non-disclosure meetings, however,
>their have been some announcements from Apollo.
>
>Their Uniforum announcements (according to InfoWorld,etc) state that
>they will be releasing System V.3 and Berkeley 4.3 version of their
>operating system.  Vague discussions that the OS also allows for
>parallelism was also mentioned.
>
>I have no idea if *this* is SR10.  
>i think not.
>
>by the way SR10 is rumored to still have Aegis...i believe Aegis
>is here to stay (on Apollos).

DOMAIN/OS is sr10.  Lest anyone got too pumped up by the DOMAIN/OS press
release and is feeling deflated by this statement of fact, fear not,
the changes made at sr10 are worthy of a naming refinement.  Some things
worth pointing out:

Many people have gotten the impression, and still have the impression
that Apollo's Unix support is an side interest for R&D.  I won't deny
that in the (now fairly distant) past, this was the case.  I want to
stress that now, this impression is definitely wrong.  Unix is not an
"optional product".  Everyone gets Unix.  We do Unix.  All of R&D "does
Unix".  We changed an enormous number of things at sr10 to make DOMAIN
work "like Unix" (where it wasn't before).  We don't do things differently
from Unix if there's no extraordinarily good reason to.  We may not do
Unix exactly the way other people do (i.e. by starting with a port of
the BSD or ATT kernel code) and that may make some people unhappy, but
we continue to believe that our Unix (a) is what the market wants/needs,
and (b) is the best basis for extending Unix functionality.

Now I know that there may not be many "Aegis" diehards out there in this
audience, but for those that are, well, don't worry.  DOMAIN/OS has some
changes that may irk you, but we broke nothing that didn't have to be
broken.  We have compatibility support so that virtually all "old" programs
will run, un-changed, un-recompiled, un-relinked.  "Aegis" has not gone
away.  From my perspective, it's really sort of funny to think that way.
To most people in R&D, "Aegis" simply means the OS kernel.  GPR, the
DM, the compilers, the "/com/sh" -- are not "Aegis"; they're libraries
and programs.  The tons of system interfaces we've defined -- they're
not Aegis -- not in the sense that they can't be used from "Unix programs".
(There aren't "Aegis programs" and "Unix programs".  There are just
programs written in one language or another that use some set of system
services or another.  The choice of language and set of system services
may determine portability to other "Unix systems".)

I like to think of things like this:  We have some base set of
functionality, expressed through procedural interfaces.  Some of the
procedures are implemented directly by the OS kernel proper, and some
are implemented in user space (some in global libraries and some in private
libraries).  Some of the base functionality pays attention to whether
the user/program wants System V behavior or BSD behavior.  On top of
this base functionality are a number of higher level access points.  These
are what users see:  the various shells (csh, Bourne shell, "/com/sh")
and the various standard commands (in "/usr/bin", "/com", "/etc", etc.)
If you want to think that Aegis is "/com/sh" and the contents of "/com",
and that somehow, that's a separate universe, feel free, but I think
you get the picture that it's best to look at things as I've just
described.

Just trying to make sure people have a clear picture...


-- 
                    -- Nat Mishkin
                       Apollo Computer Inc.
                       Chelmsford, MA
                       {decvax,mit-eddie,umix}!apollo!mishkin