Re: portability as a goal for debian?
"It's not what you don't know that's a problem, it's the things you know
that ain't so" -- Somebody I can't remember...
On 06-Mar-01, 11:24 (CST), Andreas Schuldei <andreas@schuldei.org> wrote:
> Now we all know that Portability is a Good Thing (c) and should
> be an aim in general (like 64-bit cleanness, good programming
> style and robustness).
Portability is not a absolute. Portability is writing to a set of
standards, and not making assumptions about things outside those
standards.
Portability can be good. Portability can also be costly, error prone,
and confusing. Unnecessary portability is pointless.
Some kinds of portability are relatively easy to achieve: many
(most?) C language 64 bit cleanness issues have to do with people
making assumptions about the size of "int" and its variations that
are completely unwarranted. Other kinds of portability are difficult:
making the same code base run on different OS's (not just different
Unix variants, which have more or less the same system library, but
completely different platforms, such as NT and OpenVMS) (Yes, I've done
it. No, it's not pretty.)
<FLAME TARGET>
As far as the BSD port goes: Debian uses the GNU tools. Deal with it.
Better yet, spend your time on something worthwhile, like the HURD port
or the boot floppies.
</FLAME TARGET>
Steve
--
Steve Greenland <stevegr@debian.org>
(Please do not CC me on mail sent to this list; I subscribe to and read
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