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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!metro!metro!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news1.digital.com!pa.dec.com!kar.dec.com!neideck From: neideck@kar.dec.com (Burkhard Neidecker-Lutz) Newsgroups: comp.unix.solaris,comp.unix.bsd.misc,comp.unix.internals,comp.unix.osf.osf1 Subject: Re: Solaris 2.6 Date: 3 Dec 1996 11:04:21 GMT Organization: CEC Karlsruhe Lines: 40 Distribution: inet Message-ID: <5811fl$gj4@usenet.pa.dec.com> References: <x7917mx5gx.fsf@dumbcat.codewright.com> <57shh0$o3u@web.nmti.com> <57ui72$4li@arktur.rz.uni-ulm.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: bier Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.solaris:91291 comp.unix.bsd.misc:1669 comp.unix.internals:11440 comp.unix.osf.osf1:16827 In article <57ui72$4li@arktur.rz.uni-ulm.de> borchert@turing.mathematik.uni-ulm.de (Andreas Borchert) writes: >There may be arguments how the transition is done best. But DEC >is surely not a good example for binary compatibility: Not that >they only are trying to support multiple OSes they also offer multiple >hardware platforms as well. We are an excellent example of binary compatibility. Even *with* changing hardware architecture we have provided ways of using old binaries on newer platforms. The change from Ultrix (32-bit little endian MIPS to 64-bit Alpha) was supported by binary translation that helped me at least to run packages as complex as Framemaker for years. > The future >of Sun is bound to SPARC and Solaris (which is at least now >binary compatible to the previous versions) and customers trust on this >(at least we do). Sun didn't even manage to be binary compatible on the *same* hardware platform until Solaris 2.4 (at least we had major trouble here with our SUNos 4.1.x stuff on all version from Solaris 2.0-2.3. Meanwhile, even Alphas are binary compatible via translation to SUNos 4.1 stuff. >Sun at least tries to think carefully about its customer needs. Such as in the Sun 3 to Sun4 transition ? Such as in the introduction of 64-bittedness in Solaris past 2.5 which will sure spell fun for any machine that doesn't have an UltraSparc in it ? Or are you going to do all the 64-bit APIs via code that will also run backward compatible on 32 bit machines ? Burkhard Neidecker-Lutz EUROMEDIA - Distributed Multimedia Archives for Cooperative TV Production CEC Karlsruhe , European Applied Research Center, Digital Equip. Corp. email: neideck@kar.dec.com 433Mhz 21164, 64 MB RAM, 3.2 GB disk, 17" monitor: just $3999 See http://www.enorex.com/ for details