*BSD News Article 84309


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From: kedwards@parc.xerox.com (Keith Edwards)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.solaris,comp.unix.bsd.misc,comp.unix.internals
Subject: Re: Solaris 2.6
Date: 5 Dec 1996 22:54:55 GMT
Organization: Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
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References: <32986299.AC7@mail.esrin.esa.it> <casper.32a1813c@mail.fwi.uva.nl> <57v6em$p73@helena.MT.net> <casper.32a3e5ae@mail.fwi.uva.nl> <580sgh$kpi@panix2.panix.com> <casper.32a40b7b@mail.fwi.uva.nl>
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I can't believe I'm actually responding to all the invective that's
been poured out in this thread.

As a Sun user at a site with a *lot* of Suns, I can assure the BSD
people that the binary compatibility issues that Casper raises are
*extremely* important to us.  Any solution that would require us to
recompile all of our software, or would not allow us to use existing
.o's and .a's just because of a minor version OS upgrade would simply
NOT BE ACCEPTABLE.  

Yes, the BSD approach may be cleaner.
Yes, for the folks who use BSD, recompiling their software may be a
non-issue.

But if the BSD approach means that I have to recompile the world after
doing an OS upgrade, then it's simply not gonna happen for me.
There's too much old code sitting around, suffering from bit-rot, some
of it probably without source, to even consider this idea.

Casper's points are well-argued and I'm glad that Sun (nowadays) cares
enough about binary compatibility to Do The Right Thing.

-keith
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keith edwards			
xerox palo alto research center