(deleted a bunch of stuff, I agree with all that) On Fri, 2006-04-28 at 13:06 -0700, Keith M Wesolowski wrote: > It would be useful to define the distinction between broken source and > missing or poorly-presented OpenSolaris features. For example, > suppose there is a Free Software component called foo. foo's build > instrstructure requires GNU diff, and it always assumes that > /usr/bin/diff is GNU diff. Is its failure to build on Solaris a bug > in foo (for making an unportable assumption about the build system) or > in OpenSolaris (for not being the One True System)? What if foo's > build honours PATH but still assumes that any 'diff' it finds is GNU > diff without looking for gdiff first? Or is it simply a bug that foo > relies on GNU diff?
Making the assumption that everything is GNU is wrong. Requiring a GNU tool because it has additional features that the foo maintainer doesn't want to duplicate is acceptable (to me). If this is the case, it should be a documented build dependency of foo or should be tested in configure or whatever build system foo uses. We shouldn't just think about building open source components, but also about the people writing open source components who are used to these tools. Having 'gdiff' or 'gsed' doesn't help them. Their brain assumes that diff is GNU diff and sed is GNU sed. All the little things like the lack of readline support in ftp make working on Solaris a not-so-pleasant experience. It would be cool to tell these people to add /usr/gnu/bin first in their PATH and they'll be good. Laca _______________________________________________ tools-discuss mailing list tools-discuss@opensolaris.org
