🚀 go-pugleaf

In <1395@spam.ua.oz> dcook@spam.ua.oz (David Cook) writes:
| For a start,
| is the ucb universe supposed to be _exactly_ like a BSD system ?

You have walked into a minefield, specifically, the definition of
"BSD system".  For instance, if you read the comp.unix.* groups, you
will regularly see Guy Harris and others bemoan the misconception that
BSD == SunOS.

At the time the dual universe was created, BSD meant "4.2 BSD VAX"
and the ucb universe did a very convincing job of looking like BSD.
There were more differences between System V and straight BSD, so
it was considered beneficial to allow the programmer to get all of
those niggling differences straight in Pyramid's two universes,
without having to drag tapes around to different machines
(IP was rarer then).  Hence, no string.h or 'extern int errno'.

Since that time, the OSx kernel and much of the ucb universe have been
updated to 4.3 BSD.  At the same time, the UNIX world has espoused
portability rather than pedantry, so as you have observed, the strict
separation of universes has become more annoyance than asset.

| In most cases, Makefiles will have a BSD option, and yet these
| programs fail to compile on the Pyramid. The most common errors 
| include : missing string.h and stdlib.h, errno.h _doesn't_
| have an 'extern int errno' in it, where standard systems do,
| and the symbol 'BSD' is not defined by the compiler (although
| 'pyr' is).

stdlib.h isn't present in 4.3-tahoe, though it is in the NET2
distribution; ditto for 'extern int errno'.  They are present
in SunOS and NeXT.  Perhaps one of those is your BSD reference?  
I personally find the lack of string.h inexcusable -- it's been
in BSD since 4.3.  But hey, no one asked me.

|   Are fixes to these problems in sight ? ('official' fixes
| from Pyramid, that is). Most programs, as yet, do not have
| a specific Pyramid option, and contacting the authors of
| all the programs that I attempt to compile to ask them to
| add Pyramid setup seems to be an effort-wasting option
| compared to having correct BSD operation on the Pyramid.

Unfortunately for you, Pyramid, along with many other vendors, see BSD
as a dead end in the commercial UNIX marketplace.  A few years ago,
when Kirk McKusick of U C Berkeley was asked whether a new UNIX vendor
should use BSD or System V as its porting base, he replied, "System V.
When the elephants start dancing, the mice get off the floor."
McKusick's vision was that BSD would become a testbed for new features
rather than the complete standard UNIX environment it had been.

Accordingly, hardware and software development here at Pyramid is
focused on DC/OSx, the System V Release 4 / MIPS based platform.  If
you want updated BSD, you will have to convince the management here
with green paper (or its equivalent in Au).  Say, "If you can't provide
xxx, we will buy a yyy instead."  Zzz...

Obviously, these opinions are mine and not Pyramid's.
--
dek OZ iks, noun.  (Etymology obscure; speculatively, Digital Equipment
Corporation UNIX variant for Australia.)