Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bu-cs!bzs
From: bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: SVR3.0 vs BSD4.3
Message-ID: <20789@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: 21 Mar 88 17:08:06 GMT
References: <12414@brl-adm.ARPA> <4361@megaron.arizona.edu> <7499@brl-smoke.ARPA> <20768@bu-cs.BU.EDU> <7511@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Organization: Boston U. Comp. Sci.
Lines: 28
In-reply-to: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA's message of 21 Mar 88 12:25:47 GMT



Doug,

Yup, I agree, the 4.x file system as an option via the file system
switch, job control and a decent TCP/IP implementation via Streams and
a lot of the merger would be accomplished. I would imagine that most
of the current socket interface could be emulated (at worst) thru a
library using TLI.

Someone would have to study the semantics but I will boldly say* that
the socket interface in application code is reminiscent of the
terminal ioctl stuff, it usually accounts for a very small part of the
application's code and usually in a very cliche'd manner at startup
which wouldn't be too painful in most cases to rework (not the
greatest thing to do with one's time, but I can't imagine it's more
than a couple of hours work in almost all cases, given a reasonable
substitute, the goal of obtaining a full-duplex file descriptor
attached to the remote process is straightforward enough, how you got
there shouldn't be too critical.) Obviously the hard cases would have
to be looked at (eg.  various socketopts.) I believe it's not so much
an issue of the possibilities based upon the proposed interface but
rather how good the provided implementations provided end up.

Yup, looks rosy, so much for the Gwyn/Shein Sysv/BSD wars...:-)

	-Barry Shein, Boston University

* I've been meaning to never split infinitives.