Jon Trulson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> As Casper replied previously, defining 'compatibility' is
> non-trivial. No doubt what I consider 'compatible' might have no
> meaning to a company like adobe, who would have other requirements.
I do not seee new ideas in Caspers text.
> What I was trying to get across was that one of Solaris's strengths
> is that it is actually designed, implemented, documented, and then
> supported for 'a while', something which is generally alien to Linux.
>
> As an example, if an OpenSolaris Reference Implementation (OSRI)
> supports package manager 'Coolio', then I would expect other dists
> based on OSRI to also support 'Coolio', even if it also contains
> some other package manager.
>
> I would like kernel modules and userland binaries compiled on OSRI
> to run, unmodified, on any dist that calls itself based on OSRI. I
> know this sounds a little silly (and maybe pretty obvious), but for
> any of you that have had to develop and support software on Linux,
> and in particular, the Linux kernel - you know how important this
> stuff is.
Compatiblitiy is less trivial than you might belive but without conformance
tests, we cannot claim anything about compatibility of siftware or
distributions.
> > A reference distro has no less _and_ no more than the interface definition
> > and grants users that software compiled on that distro to run on any
> > other compatible distro.
> >
>
> Well, an OSRI has to be actually *usable* as well...
I am not sure whether you understand the compatibility problems that arise from
having _additional_ software that does not belong to the interface definitions.
If you like to compile "compatible" software and prove that it is compatible,
you are not allowed to have _additional_ software in the compile machine.
If you did, the software may depend on these bits without your knowledge.
People tend to install additional software on their development machines and
people tend not to have these machines in a clean known state.
A distro alone cannot be a refernce. It must not even be changed for
the compatibility tests.
Jörg
--
EMail:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (uni)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
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