On Oct 21, 2010, at 5:51 PM, Eli Collins wrote:
>
> - The packaging is Linux specific, we've gotten push back when trying
> to contribute modifications upstream with Linuxisms since Apache
> supports non-Linux platforms (namely Solaris).
Oh come now Eli. Just say it: I push everyone really hard on making
things multiple platform to the point of being as trollish as this Ian fellow
that started this thread.
Most of the Linux-specific modifications that I've seen that have been
submitted are specifically to avoid configuring the system properly*, built in
such a way that they weren't pluggable for other operating systems, or could be
done in a much more POSIX/OS-agnostic way. The fact that there are parts of
Hadoop that don't work properly on Mac OS X (despite the overwhelming number of
Mac laptops in use by Hadoop core devs) always struck me as particularly funny
when people get frustrated with me when I point this problems out.
It is also worth mentioning that, AFAIK, only Linux and AIX have
OS-specific code in Hadoop. Attempts to get fixes (not even features!) for
specific issues for other operating systems have been fully rejected with the
cry of "we the community don't want to support specific OS issues in the core",
even tho some of them are direct hinderance to the proper operation of Hadoop
on those OSes. We have a very big double standard at work here.
* e.g., searching through x LInux distribution directories looking for a
working JRE in the primary hadoop script to protect users from putting the
location in hadoop-env.sh. To me the great irony here is that this is the
type of code that'd be great for a (mostly) single use tool do... like, say, a
packaging system....
