Erast Benson <erast@gnusolaris.org> writes:
> On Sat, 2006-05-20 at 12:32 -0500, Michael Banck wrote:
>> We had a pure NetBSD port before, but so far no non-glibc port got added
>> to the archive officially (but that doesn't mean it would get rejected
>> if it was of release quality).
>>
>> IMHO a glibc-based OpenSolaris would certainly be the better and more
>> interesting option (but might take some effort initially).
>
> Do you really believe so? Do you understand that such a "hybrid" will
> not run any existing Solaris apps like you will not be able to run
> simple thinks like Macromedia flush player, JRE, JDK, Oracle, SAP, etc
> etc... Do you still wanna do that?
Yes, IMO.
This binary compatibility with Solaris would have the same value as
the iBCS2/Linux-ABI of yesteryear (that is, have very little value at
all). The only practical use is to run proprietary Solaris
applications. That's it. Ten years ago, iBCS on GNU/Linux was a
useful tool, but today proprietary software runs natively on Linux,
but more importantly the proprietary software in common use ten years
ago now has plenty of Free replacements. As a result, iBCS is no
longer in use; I'm not even sure if Linux-ABI has been maintained for
the last four years. It's dead.
I the same vein, I don't believe ABI compatibility with Solaris is
particularly useful nowadays for a GNU/Solaris port. Let's face it,
the libc and system call interfaces are only a small part of the ABI
of an application, and soname revs in all of the other libraries are
going to make it deviate from Solaris if it becomes part of Debian
proper. That is, the libc ABI isn't the whole picture for anything
but a trivial program.
Having GNU libc and ld.so /would/ be useful, certainly of much higher
value than limited Solaris compatibility. We would get the same
linker (and extensions), plus the same libc (and extensions) as all
our other ports. Having a uniform toolchain across all the ports has
a number of advantages.
GNU libc likely does not support Solaris-specific features. This is
not a reason to not use GNU libc however, but is a reason to add the
missing features. I understand that glibc was known to work on
Solaris in the past, so it can surely be fixed up to work with some
effort. In the long term, having GNU libc on GNU/Solaris is very
desirable, and I wouldn't call it GNU/Solaris myself until it uses GNU
libc.
Regards,
Roger
--
Roger Leigh
Printing on GNU/Linux? http://gutenprint.sourceforge.net/
Debian GNU/Linux http://www.debian.org/
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