On Tue, Dec 13, 2005 at 05:38:12PM +0500, Moinak Ghosh wrote: > > I am not very clear on these Standards compliance issues. > > [some snipped] > > The interfaces for the utilities - behavioral semantics > and syntax of the command line options etc. are also > governed by standards like SVID and SUSv3. Internal to > SUN there are testsuites that verify compliance to these > standards and any non-compliance is a bug.
Thanks for this info, Moinak. I was not aware of the internal Sun compliance issues. SVID compatibility, I am certain is not built into GNU by design, but, SUS (Single user Specs) surely is. Since this is of importance to Solaris based things, it is only appropriate that requisite tools be built with all such considerations to replace proprietory binaries. > > > If you use gcc, and specially glibc, 100% compatibility > > with pure Solarisbinaries may stand broken, whether you > > like it or not. The compatbility is to be built at more > > core levels than userland utils and apps ... > > That is upto the user if he wants to build a custom > system he very well can using OpenSolaris. Just get hold > of whatever sources and then configure, make, make > install. Yup, this is well understandable. Just brought out above point since compiling under gcc and the solaris development platforms are both acceptable now. > > Exactly. No issues if are the tech-savvy compile from > source guy. I might just as well start with building the > kernel and everything above it. The kernel comes quite late ... its binutils first ;-) > > And even personally most of the time I find it really > boring having to download and build stuff. I'd just grab > a latest binary package and install it. But binary > package on Linux is distro specific. Yes, this is true, mainly for the rpm based distros. But most major distros have some version of commonly used packages in their stable. > > The trouble here is that an average SuSE user will be > completely lost if he is suddenly confronted with a > Mandrake system. We do not want to repeat this with > OpenSolaris. This will never happen to OpenSolaris. OpenSolaris is open sourced to the community but core control still remains with Sun. The core sections would always stay that way, but at 'userland' levels things may digress. > > Why do you think standardisation will restrict freedom ? What I am talking about is at the 'user level', not the core level of system apps. To take a case in point the developers of qt library recommend qt to be installed under /opt and ld.so.conf duly modified. Check out different distros and see where they lie. Why do you want to take away this freedom ? The configure script for most apps place binaries in /usr/local but then different distros place these things under /usr and othe places. All distros place mail spools under /var but then people handling mail handle things differently, varying upon load. Look at the variations in placement of docs for user apps. If not for these variations, all 'distros' would be the same ... a drab drab world, with the charm of the 'Start' button on Windows ;-) Though some like it that way! > > BTW porting glibc to OpenSolaris is a huge project I guess. Don't try it ;-) Unless juggling with fire is a hobby ... > > Online manpages are available at http://docs.sun.com > Will go there. Thanks for the lead. Bish
