🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <DRW.90Jun6203327@zermelo.mit.edu> drw@zermelo.mit.edu (Dale R. Worley) writes:
>
>Sun is changing their version of Unix from BSD 4.2 derived to Sys V
>derived.  Among other things, they are converting from a.out to COFF
>format binaries.  I suspect this means that all Gnu tools that deal
>with object code (especially GDB) will stop working.  Am I right?  Is
>this a problem?

I have some marketing literature that claims their OS is System V Release
4.  It is not clear from the lit whether this is SunOS 4.1 or vaporware.

Much of what I have read of release 4 indicates that its got "all the
Berkeley stuff" built in as part of the standard.  I would imagine that
it uses COFF, but I do not know.

What is mighty peculiar about the lit is that it boldy states that Sun
has a single hardware architecture, and that is SPARC.  They go on
to criticize other vendors who have multiple architectures.

This is mighty peculiar, as I am typing this article on a Sun 3/260, which
to the best of my knowledge has a Motorola 68020 installed.  Maybe field
service gave me an upgrade when I wasn't looking.

One thing I am curious about, is whether the FSF plans to pursue Posix
or FIPS compatibility.  I see mention of that in some of their sources --
one of the greps talks about how all the grep's will be merged for
Posix compliance.  

If the FSF were to be Posix compliant, then the Federal Government would
use GNU, becuase they would pay less, and they would get sources, which
is important to the government, so they inspect it for security holes.

If the government used GNU, then all us consultants would reap a bonanza
in support fees, and the FSF would probably get a lot of grants from
the Feds.

Not that I like System 5 -- but a useful strategy may be to provide
a "compatibility mode", like Sun does presently (/usr/5bin/cc compiles
using the System 5 system call semantics, etc.)
-- 
Michael D. Crawford
Oddball Enterprises		Consulting for Apple Computer Inc.
606 Modesto Avenue		escher@apple.com
Santa Cruz, CA 95060		Applelink: escher@apple.com@INTERNET#
oddball!mike@ucscc.ucsc.edu	The opinions expressed here are solely my own.

		alias make '/bin/make & rn'