Hi! ----
A small proposal for discussion: RFE: Replace (Open-)Solaris's /usr/ccs/bin/make with "dmake" (from Sun Studio 11) * Why would it be usefull to replace /usr/ccs/bin/make with "dmake" ? - "dmake" allows "parallel", "distributed" and "grid" (e.g. distributed via grid) builds, making it a perfect application for Sun's new multicore chips such as Niagara1/2 + Rock, dual-core Opterons and racks filled with Sun machines (e.g. in either "distributed" or "grid" mode). - Jörg Schilling said a while ago that "dmake" and "make" are quite similar (and I guess maybe even share the same codebase): http://groups.google.com/group/comp.unix.solaris/browse_frm/thread/cdbe46c1bd8bf40b/e413cb17650f4c53?lnk=st&q=dmake+make+solaris+j%C3%B6rg+schilling&rnum=2&hl=en#e413cb17650f4c53 Originally it made sense to charge customer for the advanched functionality in "dmake" (compared to the normal "make" in Solaris) - but now Sun Studio 11 is available for "free" - so there is no need to have two versions of "make" floating around. - Having only one version of "make" around in Solaris/Studio products will likely lower the engineering costs in the long term. - Sun did already lots of efforts to enhance the parallelism in Solaris, including the introduction of the all-new SMF startup system which starts services in parallel. Stuffing "dmake" at /usr/ccs/bin/make's place would just be the next logical step to explore parallelism in Solaris. - Sun is moving to a product line where almost every computer has multicore chips. Having a "make" binary which makes use of such a feature would be quite usefull (if anyone from Sun is looking for a business case... :-) ). For example the Niagara-based T1000/T2000 machines would get another usefull application - for "free". - The switch may be quite cheap to implement (looking at engineering time) - "dmake" already exists, is maintained and fully documented. * "Contra" arguments: - Testing needs to be done whether dmake is 100% backwards-compatible to /usr/ccs/bin/make (except that there is new functionality) - Lawyers will have to check the dmake sources. - Sun Studio's value will decrease since another functionality gets integrated into the base operating system. - A business case is required (does Niagara count ? :-) ). Comments/ideas/thoughts/rants/etc. welcome... ---- Bye, Roland -- __ . . __ (o.\ \/ /.o) [EMAIL PROTECTED] \__\/\/__/ MPEG specialist, C&&JAVA&&Sun&&Unix programmer /O /==\ O\ TEL +49 641 7950090 (;O/ \/ \O;) _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
