*BSD News Article 8383


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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!network.ucsd.edu!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!caen!uunet!mcsun!ieunet!dec4ie!jkh
From: jkh@whisker.lotus.ie (Jordan K. Hubbard)
Subject: Re: [386BSD],fix for SharedLibraries posted recently
In-Reply-To: veit@du9ds3's message of 30 Nov 92 12: 51:07 GMT
Message-ID: <JKH.92Nov30230406@whisker.lotus.ie>
Sender: usenet@ieunet.ie (USENET News System)
Nntp-Posting-Host: whisker.lotus.ie
Organization: Lotus Development Ireland
References: <2029@lysator.liu.se> <veit.723127867@du9ds3>
Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1992 23:04:06 GMT
Lines: 44

	Sorry, I couldn't resist. No flames here, may you be happy
	with your shared libraries, but you support my argumentation
	quite well. I said there will be different improved versions
	of this "shared libraries" release RSN. We now already have a
	fix for the original posting, and you just recognized the
	getopt problem. I wish you good luck for hunting after other
	incompatible library functions; there are some more...

Now Dr. Veit, that's a BIT unfair.  You and I agree for the most part
that more centralization of effort needs to take place, but I don't
see anything wrong with interim solutions that everyone seems to
understand are only interim (and this user's posting implied that he
did).  I am sure that when the 'official' release comes out, it will
also be full of bugs and 'incompatible library functions'!  Just
because it's official is no guarantee that it will work (the fact that
various parts of the official 0.1 stuff DON'T work bears this out!).

So the point is that if this serves a useful purpose, to someone,
Right Now (as opposed to "sometime soon" with the 0.2 stuff), then
it's not an entirely bad thing!  It could very well be that people
happily run this code (modulo whatever patches for it are released)
for the next 9 months or so until the replacement is shaken out enough
to provide the same degree of stability.

All this probably sounds like I'm coming down hard on Jolitz for sins
committed in 0.1 and soon-to-be-committed in 0.2 - I'm not.  I'm
simply trying to make the point that worshiping at the altar of Our
Lady of The Official Release (as Holger sometimes tends to do :-) is
not always the answer to all your prayers either.  Take what you see
here with a grain of salt and use it if you can.  I know I've gotten
a lot of very useful stuff here that I use quite happily every day (I
don't know what I'd do without the pcfs code at this point - thanks
again, Paul!).  When the winds of change next blow through 386bsd,
I'll undoubtedly be tagging right along..

Thanks for the patches, Ronnie.  There's still a lot people can learn
from this shared library implementation, despite its too-simplistic
view of the world in some areas (and perhaps this might even aid in
understanding it - who knows?).

					Jordan
--
Jordan Hubbard		Lotus Development Ireland	jkh@whisker.lotus.ie
I DO NOT SPEAK FOR LOTUS - IT HAS PLENTY OF LAWYERS TO DO THAT FOR IT ALREADY