Joseph Kowalski wrote:
>
> OK, I've gotten a couple of private messages about this. I was
> clearly unclear in what I said.
>
> My issue is that if this is "good enough" for the community (of Linux
> users), this is good enough to allow this to be integrated into
> Solaris. Sure, we have no idea how much this will bother Solaris
> users. Just the same, we have little idea about how much this already
> bothers Linux users. I am fairly sure that the pain (what ever it is)
> is about the same for both classes.
>
> I'll retract my statement that this is a P4 or P5 bug. Actually, its
> less than that, because it does conform to its specification, making
> this into an RFE. If this was a Sun funded project, we as the ARC
> would certainly question the decision to not support hardlinks. We
> might even add that as a TCR. However, this is the importation of
> FOSS. They already made the decision as to if hardlinks should be
> supported. We just have to live with that choice.
>
> We live in a different world than we are accustomed to living in.
>
> - jek3
Hang on a sec. I think what I'm hearing is that it is now OK to accept
architecturally inferior software into Solaris if it already exists on
Linux. (Note specifically that I'm not indicating anything about how
"widespread" its use is -- I don't think unison is in widespread use...
but I'm not really in a position to know.)
The fundamental problem I have with that, is that when software that is
inferior (perhaps greatly so) is located in /usr/bin, the user has *no*
way to distinguish between "first class" software developed at Sun's
traditional quality standards, and various crapware that Sun has just
crammed into the distribution but which may have major flaws which we
"accept" because its "good enough for the Linux community". The user
who finds unison via "man -k" doesn't realize this distinction, and
assumes that the same level of support that comes with other utilities
(such as rsync or tar) comes with unison.
Are we just abdicating all engineering responsibility here, so that
Solaris will ultimately become a mishmash of various bits of FOSS of
differing quality? I really hope not!
unison as documented for this case, IMO, does *not* belong in any
default distribution of Solaris, but in some value add location where
folks who want it can get at it easily. I *really* believe that we need
to set some kind of precedent here defining what are appropriate things
to have in the core (and what are the quality and support guarantees for
such), versus what can go in some other ghetto repository.
-- Garrett
