On Fri, Apr 28, 2006 at 04:40:03PM +0100, John Rice wrote: > optimization, which is good. However, that's not the issue. The problem > is really down to the various build tools or lack of them on Solaris > that OSS just expects to be there on a Unix box if it is to be able to > build with out lots of hair loss on the part of the user.
The problem is really that people, for reasons of ignorance or malice, write nonportable software and fail to document it as such. Ironically the FSF is actually very good about portability most of the time, despite their goal of replacing and eliminating all other operating systems. Others simply assume all the world is running GNU/Linux. Well, that's their right - they did the work, and if they don't want you running their software on OpenSolaris, they aren't obligated to help you. If we want people to be able to use this software, it's up to us to fix it on the platform we love. > It would be great to solve this - if we are serious about really making > Solaris rock as a developer platform I think we have to. It already does. A lot of your suggestions seem to equate "good development environment" with "looks, feels, acts, and sounds exactly bug-for-bug and feature-for-feature compatible with a hypothetical common GNU/Linux distribution." We can help people who want that by delivering /usr/gnu; add that to your path first and you'll feel a lot more at home (and /usr/gnu, unlike /usr/bin, could contain unprefixed names of the familiar utilities). This is just like /usr/xpg4 and friends - your path determines the standards personality you see. > Is the solution to include the current JDS Common Build Environment - > has all of the GNU/ Apache build utils like automake, autoconf, > libtools, make, ant ...? Absolutely not. The JDS "CBE" (which is curiously named since it's actually not common at all but specific to JDS) is an unholy amalgamation of stuff that's already in OpenSolaris, stuff that's in the Companion, and other stuff, but with different versions, different configuration options, and no architectural review. That's unfortunate for a build environment, but it would be catastrophic in shipping products - be they Solaris or any other distribution. > 1) Add Free Software development tools currently not shipped with > Solaris. This includes automake, autoconf, libtool, cvs, etc. All of this is in the Companion already. It needs some TLC, but you could ARC it and put it in SFW. Not that I want to encourage anyone to use these tools, but we shouldn't prevent it either. > 2) Many commands in the CBE are replacements for existing apps > in Solaris. Examples include make, diff, m4, flex. We should > work with the Solaris team to enhance the Solaris versions of the > tools so we don't need to ship an extra GNU version of the tool. Sure, when possible. But /usr/gnu would make that a lot less important. -- Keith M Wesolowski "Sir, we're surrounded!" Solaris Kernel Team "Excellent; we can attack in any direction!" _______________________________________________ tools-discuss mailing list tools-discuss@opensolaris.org
