Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!oddjob!hao!noao!arizona!lm
From: lm@arizona.edu (Larry McVoy)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: More Questions about Sun OS/ATT Merged UNIX.
Message-ID: <4128@megaron.arizona.edu>
Date: 4 Mar 88 06:56:35 GMT
References: <1742@quacky.mips.COM>
Reply-To: lm@megaron.arizona.edu.UUCP (Larry McVoy)
Distribution: all
Organization: University of Arizona, Tucson
Lines: 37
Keywords: SunOS 5, Merged UNIX

In article <1742@quacky.mips.COM> hitz@quacky.UUCP (David Hitz) writes:
>If the default environment is really SYSV-ish, that seems to imply that
>(1) SYSV commands must build unchanged and (2) the SYSV headers must
>be the ones that are really in /usr/include.

Several vendors offer both via conditional symbolic links.  There are
two trees (sort of) and depending upon what sort of universe you are in
you either get a sys5 environment or a BSD environment.  

I hope that this _not_ what Sun is going to do.  Why?  Because it perpetuates
the problem, rather than attempt a solution.  What really needs to be done is
to have some smart (set of) person(s) take a long hard look at both kernels
and boths sets of command trees.  They should come up with a list of items
that are

    a) syntactically and semantically the same (i.e., ARE the same)
    b) syntactically different but semantically the same
    c) syntactically the same but semantically different (these exist)
    d) syntactically and semantically different

and resolve the differences.  I know it's not quite as bad as you all may be
thinking; I put LAI's TCP/IP into a V.3 kernel recently and it shoehorned in
all right.  Once you've done that you have similar semantics and it's just
a question of deciding which are ``best'' and committing to them and providing
a compat lib for loose ends.  

I'll add a plug for System V and then shutup: I grew up (as much as I have :-)
on BSD.  I went to work and had to deal with system V.  It's really pretty
nice.  It needs a fast file system, and maybe job control (mostly obsoleted
by windows), but it has select (they call it poll) and best yet: it has
the SVID (System Five Interface Definition) and SVVS (System Five Verification
Suite).  That amounts to user doc that is _correct_ and a test to prove that
the kernel does what the manuals say it does (kernel here means kernel + libs).
That's very nice.  
-- 

Larry McVoy	lm@arizona.edu or ...!{uwvax,sun}!arizona.edu!lm