On Tue, Feb 01, 2011 at 07:07:30AM +0000, smi...@zenzebra.mv.com wrote: > Lucio De Re <lu...@proxima.alt.za> writes: > > > Also, you have managed to stomp all over a couple of this mailing list's > > most sacred cows with your suggestion that the Plan 9 kernel code is less > > than perfect > > Ooh! No intent to offend. I actually haven't even looked at the kernel > code, yet. I was referring to the bits under /sys/src/cmd/. > No offense taken, sacred cows are usually very thin because they are sacred :-)
> > _my_ suggestion to you is that you port the code to GCC and do what > > you like with it there. > > You mean port the userspace to GCC? Or the kernel? Wouldn't that kind > of defeat the intent behind Plan 9's redesigned toolchain? Is gcc even > supported enough on Plan 9 for serious work? The docs I've read seem to > suggest that gcc is kind of "glued onto the side of" Plan 9 proper. > The kernel code, so you can have your paradigms where I assumed you would miss them the most. No one cares about user space applications: they work, why change them? That way lies a proliferation of incompatible versions. And plan9port provides most of the Plan 9 userspace under a plethora of platforms, so that job is already done. As for GCC, it's like Linux, you know where to get it. It doesn't fit very well within Plan 9 (I have a sort-of-working version I keep as a monument), so my idea was to encourage you to turn the Plan 9 platform into something that ought to match your religious beliefs more closely. There is merit to having Plan 9 supported as a GCC application, but no one here has the necessary faith in GCC to invest in doing it. > > Chances are that the the changes you want to introduce are going to be > > incompatible in some or other manner; > > Some, yes. But most not. At least not yet. :) I expect I might run > into trouble figuring out how to pass around strings containing NUL > bytes, though. As long as you don't try to treat them as text strings, I don't see why you should encounter any problems. And I fail to see how you would do any better on any other platform, without resorting to a completely new string type. And in that vein, do you want to compare Plan 9's support for UTF-8 to other platforms' support for internationalisation? ++L
