🚀 go-pugleaf

ron@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au (Ron Van Schyndel) writes:

>>ggw@wolves.uucp (Gregory G. Woodbury) writes:

>>>I appreciate the effort put into Zsh, but there is one small complaint
>>>that I have.

>>>The package is BSD/SUN specific!

>>>Another tool that I went and poked at only to discover that there are
>>>critical non-portable dependencies not noted in the announcement.

>elliss@kira.egr.msu.edu (Stew Ellis) writes:

>>I second the irritation, not with regard to zsh(I have a Sun but I have not

>FLAME ON 

>So are there document(s) which describes all the different UNIX versions
>around (a standard ?? Just like RS232?).    And while we're at it, does 
>someone have access to ALL the different UNIX platforms, so these programs
>can be given a GOOD going over (for free, of course).

>I thought the idea was to fix any problems, if possible, and mail these to 
>the author (as well as post them - but DO mail, since the author could then
>merge these patches and re-submit when there are enough of them).

>Ron.

>FLAME OFF
>-- 
>Ron van Schyndel                      ron@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au
>Physics Department, Monash University ron%monu6.cc.monash.edu.au@uunet.UU.NET
>CAULFIELD EAST, Victoria, AUSTRALIA   {hplabs,mcvax,uunet,ukc}!munnari!monu6..
>Location: 37 52 38.8S  145 02 42.0E   Phone: +613-573-2567   Fax: +613-573-2358 

I am not completely sure what Ron van Schyndel's point is, nor why the
excerpt from my posting is included.  Some of us do not have time to spend
fixing too many different packages that we downloaded not knowing what
platforms had already been taken care.  I reiterate:  even though I
appreciate the effort of the people who write or manage to port a
significant package, I think it is rude of them to waste my time by letting
me assume that since there is no warning that "THIS ONLY RUNS ON Such-and-so
OS" that it must be portable.  On a Sun it is not enough to tell me SunOS,
but what version of SunOS.  I have several hundred megs of source code that
would not run on Xenix without Doug Gwynn's directory package, or that can't
compile on a Sun or HP because it uses Athena Widgets.  Much of this was 
collected over long distance phone lines at personal expense.

I do not expect authors to port their packages to every variant Unix before
they post, just to tell me which exact variants they have ported to.  I have
done enough ports that I can frequently predict my difficulties that way.
The problem is not limited to Unix.  I collected some code
day-before-yesterday that claimed to be the diffs to compile pbmplus under
DOS.  Then yesterday there was an "Oh I forgot!  You need the recent port of
GCC to DOS to compile this."  Had I known that from the first few lines of
the first shar it would have saved me some time.  When I want/need 32 bits I
don't get it from DOS.  When I do DOS I don't want 32 bits.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                                             _________________________________
  R.Stewart (Stew) Ellis                    / _______________________________/
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  elliss@frith.egr.msu.edu            ENGINEERING & MANAGEMENT INSTITUTE        

  "Apple Macintosh, the closed system for people with supposedly open minds."
    - plagiarized from someone else on the net
  "How you gonna do it? OS/2 it!" - stupid IBM ad 
  "Have you ever heard anything so half-OSsed?" - me