Re: Bug#34956: ps formatting problem (fwd)
Daniel Jacobowitz writes:
> On Thu, Mar 25, 1999 at 03:19:09PM -0500, Albert D. Cahalan wrote:
>> Make that: Solaris, IRIX, Digital UNIX, and AIX. (basically every UNIX)
>> Considering the above, portable UNIX apps may indeed expect a useful
>> return value.
>
> No, apps written for those systems may expect a useful return value.
Software that runs on all those systems is quite portable.
Portability need not include VMS, MacOS, and DOS 1.0.
> The point of having cross-platform standards like POSIX and Unix98 is
> to establish just what can be expected.
That doesn't mean we can't support additional expectations. In nearly
all cases, operating systems with good fputs behavior document it.
>> I see a perfectly good Free Software version of BSD. Actually, there
>> are three of them. I don't see a good Free Software version of UNIX.
>> It would be pretty stupid to clone existing Free Software. If I want
>> to get BSD behavior, duh, I might just get the real thing!
>
> If you wanted to get UNIX behavior, perhaps you should get the real
> thing?
If I want BSD behavior, ----> I get BSD, which is Free Software.
If I want UNIX behavior, ----> I get... what?
>>> This has come up repeatedly, and Ulrich has said repeatedly that he
>>> will not change the behavior of glibc as distributed upstream.
>>
>> Fine, Debian has a way to automatically apply patches. This is a good
>> patch. It makes it easier to port UNIX code to Linux.
>
> And it introduces an incompatibility between our GNU C Library and that
> of every home-grown or alternate distribution. Changing the behavior
> of system calls is beyond the intended purpose of the Debian patch
> system. The authors of the library make the choice about its
> interfaces.
The authors of the library have made a poor choice. I would not be at
all surprised to see other distributions follow a Debian lead.
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