Tim Bradshaw wrote: > On 12 Jun 2009, at 23:46, Dr. David Kirkby wrote: > >> I don't know if you work for Sun, but if you do, it would be really >> good >> if Sun made some open-access Suns available for developers to test >> their >> code, like HP do. > > Surely this would only matter for SPARC-related issues (which I don't > think we're looking at here, are we?) I can't imagine anyone finding > it too much hard work to install a Solaris x86 on a VM (both available > free of charge, from Sun even, if you use virtualbox). The situation > is different for HP-UX & AIX which don't run on (VMs on) commodity HW, > and even if they did might not be legal to run there.
Yes, SPARC systems mainly I would agree, but ... I think there are a lot of people that can't be bothered to install Solaris x86, but might be more inclined to try to resolve Solaris-specific bugs if someone sent them a bug report, with a link to a Sun site where they could verify the bug. I've got an Intel based Sony laptop, but I gather Sony fix the BIOS in some way that prevents vitualisation software working - or possibly it works, but with poor performance. I've got OpenSolaris on that anyway, but I don't have any x86 machine with Solaris 10. HP did in fact have linux systems too and I think some of those are on x86 hardware. > The Sun compilers are free as well (though not open source to my > knowledge). Yes. > My experience (I'm contracted through Sun at the moment) is that > virtually the only place where you need to care about the x86/SPARC > thing is differences in booting, which won't matter for SQLite. I > guess compiler options &c might be different, and certainly getting > good performance from the CMT systems would probably require access to > them. Experience tells me, the differences are more than just booting. I assume compiler flags could be easily set on Intel based Solaris system which would not work on a SPARC based Solaris system. My Sony laptop has the BIOS screwed up *purposely* by Sony to prevent virtualisation software being used (or at least severely cripple the performance of it). That runs OpenSolaris anyway, but not everyone is going to take that route. People could often dual boot or install Solaris, but a lot don't bother. I think they could be persuaded to fix Solaris-specific bugs if they are made aware of them, and have *easy* access to a Solaris machine. Over the years, I have let the occasional developer have access to my SPARC based systems, but not as root. There was in fact someone on comp.unix.solaris recently letting people have root access in a zone. The University of Washington has given me access to their T5240, despite the fact I have my own SPARC hardware. So there are cases of people allowing others access to their SPARC based systems. But to my knowledge, Sun have never done it. The guys at the University of Washington produced some binaries of the compiler tools (based on gcc-4.3.3) to build Sage on a Blade 2500 running Solaris 10, update 4. I downloaded them to my Blade 2000, which runs Solaris 10 update 6, where they worked fine. But the fortran compiler did not work on the universities Sun T5240, which runs Solaris 10 update 4. I know of a bug in Mathematica, a rather expensive bit of software from Wolfram Research, which meant it run on a Solaris x86 system with an AMD processor, but not some Intel ones. I believe if Sun make some public access machines available, there would be a benefit to Sun, and would hopefully avoid a lot of the GNUisms one sees in software. Whether the cost would outweigh the benefit I have no idea. There is obviously the cost of power, hardware and staff to run it. Dave _______________________________________________ sqlite-users mailing list sqlite-users@sqlite.org http://sqlite.org:8080/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sqlite-users
