On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 8:24 AM, Garrett D'Amore - sun microsystems <gd78059 at sac.sfbay.sun.com> wrote: > I'm submitting the following *full* case on my own behalf. > > Note that I'm not filing using the "normal" 20q format. ?I think this case > will be easier to understand without it. ?The major concerns raised in > this case have to do with our compatibility guarantees, which is why this > case must be handled as a full review.
The title seems slightly misnamed. This isn't just libucb; isn't it really the removal of SunOS 4 binary compatibility? >?The content itself is fairly straight > forward. Or maybe not. > EOF of /usr/ucblib > ------------------ > > We have already removed Source Compatibility for legacy SunOS 4.x (BSD) > applications. ?Right now we retain some of the infrastructure to support > legacy applications at *run-time* in the form of these libraries located > under /usr/ucblib And /usr/4lib (some of the filenames there are enough to turn one's hair grey). Why no mention of that? > (with both .so and .so.1, and 32 and 64-bit variants as > appropriate): > > ? ? ? ?libcurses > ? ? ? ?libdbm > ? ? ? ?librpcsoc > ? ? ? ?libtermcap > ? ? ? ?libucb > > Its our belief that these libraries should not be used in any applications, > even at run time. ?This is ancient, legacy stuff, best avoided by everyone. Apart from customers who actually need this stuff in order for their applications to work at all. > RISKS > ----- > > The main risk is that some software out there might still be using these > libraries. ?This would be particularly unfortunate, since those applications > will cease to function. ?A web search found only one common case, which is the > Mplayer and associated ffmpeg open source video player, where this was found > to be an issue. ?(In this case, a recompile of the open source application > without /usr/ucb in the compiler/linker search paths resolves the problem.) You need to look harder. Searching the web isn't much help; a lot of affected software will (almost by definition) predate the web; much of it is also commercial. I know that I use some SunOS 4 binaries pretty regularly. However, a quick look around one of our datacenters indicates that we have a variety of old, presumably commercial, software still using the old ucb stuff. > we truly believe the number > of such applicattions to be vanishingly small. I believe you're sadly mistaken in believing this to be a small problem. One of the key advantages of Solaris is that old software just runs. (And in practice this actually works better the further back you go, as you don't have to worry about all the unstable FOSS applications and libraries that have been introduced in recent times.) All this stuff only applies to SPARC, of course. There was no SunOS 4 on x86 to worry about (and /usr/4lib doesn't exist there). -- -Peter Tribble http://www.petertribble.co.uk/ - http://ptribble.blogspot.com/
