Erast Benson and Joerg Schilling were discussing GNU/Solaris:
GNU/Solaris distribution uses OpenSolaris kernel and runtime(libc). So,
it runs any existing Solaris software without modifications.
If you put them into /usr/bin, you will overwrite existing standard UNIX tools
This points out some large differences in people's perceptions of
"what is a Solaris app?" One perspective is a minimalist one,
concerned with syscalls in libc; another is broader and takes into
account the utilities and other commands that are part of the system.
Still others focus on middle ware and libraries, Java, web services,
etc...
That is, "runs any existing Solaris Software without modifications" is
more difficult to do than it is to say. It is safe to say that the
ARC process at Sun spends much of its time ensuring that changes to
the system don't negatively impact this area. The Solaris Binary
Compatibility effort (see appcert(1)) grapples with this issue as well.
Going forward with OpenSolaris distros, a simple expectation might be
If it runs on Solaris AND it passes appcert(1), then
it should also run on any "Solaris Compatible" system.
(Noting that appcert focuses on shared libraries and
does not address system()'d or exec()'d utilities...)
-John
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