Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!aplcen!uunet!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen
From: davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (Wm E. Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: Binaries and which packing (Was Re: xx vs. uu)
Message-ID: <502@sixhub.UUCP>
Date: 16 Feb 90 00:22:03 GMT
References: <1513@krafla.rhi.hi.is> <1990Feb14.134810.8305@uwasa.fi> <1745@borabora.omni.com> <1489@dfsun1.electro.swri.edu>
Reply-To: davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Organization: *IX Public Access UNIX, Schenectady NY
Lines: 39


  I guess I better say something about this before the .d group gets
more volume than the binaries. I have just spent a LOT of time moving
Rahul's "make a posting" stuff to SysV and getting it working in a way
which is reasonable for me. Don't think that you have to get your
opinion in quickly, I am *not* about to change soon.

  Any change will be to an archiver which is extremely portable. I
regularly work with Xenix/286, Xenix/386, MS-DOS, VMS, SunOS, Ultrix,
V.3/386, Unicos, and whatever SysV thing runs on a Stardent. I have
friends who want it to run on SysIII (PC/ix and LSI-11), and Amiga, too.
I care a very great deal about portability, perhaps more than most of
you, who want to be sure it runs on YOUR platform. An if something runs
on TOPS-20 Keith would like it for SIMTEL20 some day. You can also bet
that it will be free.

  I'm willing to listen to suggestions about decoders, but almost every
unix site has uudecode, and that's a big plus. I have to balance that
against the problems with EBCDIC.

  I am saving all of the postings which have reasonable technical
points, and I'm looking at porting lharc. First it wouldn't run on a 32
bit machine, then I made the ints shorts, now it won't run on machines
with short>16 bits. Now it really does have to be examined to see where
the "silent truncation" is being done. Also, the unix versions currently
don't restore the permissions and date modified. That's important on
some systems.

  I have had some private mail with Rahul over the years and he was
talking about a better zoo. Unfortunately that was before he got so
busy, so I don't know what's happening on that.

  Let's keep up the technical discussion, but don't expect any changes
for awhile. The only thing I want to do for the next few months is post.
-- 
bill davidsen - davidsen@sixhub.uucp (uunet!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen)
    sysop *IX BBS and Public Access UNIX
    moderator of comp.binaries.ibm.pc
"Getting old is bad, but it beats the hell out of the alternative" -anon