Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cbmvax!ditto
From: ditto@cbmvax.UUCP (Michael "Ford" Ditto)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Amiga Unix
Summary: Plain 'ol System V
Keywords: job control?
Message-ID: <5495@cbmvax.UUCP>
Date: 13 Dec 88 02:34:22 GMT
References: <312@cs-spool.calgary.UUCP>
Reply-To: ditto@cbmvax.UUCP (Michael "Ford" Ditto)
Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA
Lines: 48

In article <312@cs-spool.calgary.UUCP> paquette@cpsc.ucalgary.ca (Trevor Paquette) writes:
[ about Amiga Unix ]
> 1) Does the C compiler support of the Amiga rom routines? Ie can
>    I open windows,, draw lines, fill polygones etc.. Or are there
>    whole new librarys that I have to link with?

Well, I suppose the compiler would let you call them if they were there,
but no ROM functions (or any parts of AmigaOS) exist when Unix is running.
In fact, if you even try to read the addresses where the ROM normally
would be, you'll get the familiar "Bus error - core dumped".

Graphics support is very simple at this point, partially because Unix
doesn't do a whole lot of graphics.  The windowing system can display
Unix plot format files (like everybody has lots of those, eh?).

> 2) VERY IMPORTANT. Does it support job control? Ie can I throw a job
>    into the background and then recall it later with 'fg'? Can I
>    suspend a job (ala '^Z') and then push it to the background?

System V has this stuff called "shell layers", which, I suppose,
is The Next Best Thing to Being There.  Yes, you can hit ^Z, but
the job is automatically "pushed into the background" (i.e. there
is no "stopped" state), and you find yourself not at a shell, but
at a silly prompt from which you can select which job to be active.
Normally, your "jobs" are actual shell sessions, and you can have
up to seven of them.

Apparrently, even AT&T admits that "shell layers" is no substitute
for real job control, because they will have real csh-style job
control in SysV release 4, whenever that comes out (late 1989).

Of course, AmigaDos doesn't have job control, either, and people
get along fine without it there.  (Job control is just a crutch
for OS's that don't do windows. :-)

> 3) Has any 4.3 BSD enhancements found it's way into it?

Not really, although it is likely that some BSD command-level
utilities will be included eventually.  (Like csh, for example).
From a programming perspective, the only BSDisms likely to be
included would be a "sockets" library (and that isn't certain).
-- 
					-=] Ford [=-

"The number of Unix installations	(In Real Life:  Mike Ditto)
has grown to 10, with more expected."	ford@kenobi.cts.com
- The Unix Programmer's Manual,		...!sdcsvax!crash!elgar!ford
  2nd Edition, June, 1972.		ditto@cbmvax.commodore.com