Re: Thread deficiencies
Ted,
Very well said. I guess I was pushing the envelope by extending that
premise to GNU/Linux applications running on other GNU systems with
different kernels or other OSs with GNU/Linux emulation where "clone"
didn't work. I'll retract that (the other kernels & emulations, not POSIX)
to save myself additional embarasement... :-)
FYI, the enclosed statement is on the top page at URL
http://www.kernel.org/
"Linux is a clone of the operating system Unix, written from scratch by
Linus Torvalds with assistance from a loosely-knit team of hackers across
the Net. It aims towards POSIX compliance."
Sincerely,
George Kraft IV
gk4@us.ibm.com
512-838-2688; t/l 678-2688
Linux Technology Center
IBM, Austin Texas
tytso@mit.edu on 01/07/2000 07:58:56 PM
To: mclinux@gate.net
cc: jmknoble@pobox.com, lsb-spec@lists.linuxbase.org
Subject: Re: Thread deficiencies
Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2000 00:13:22 -0500
From: Al Guerra <mclinux@gate.net>
No. Firstly, we are not the POSIX standards body. We are the __Linux__
standards body. Any pretense of being all things to everyone should be
dropped right now. Developers that want to write Linux apps will have to
use what Linux provides. Linux doesn't have pthreads, it has clone(). So
we should adopt clone().
Umm... but part of our purpose is to encourage the development and
porting of already existing Unix applications by third-party software
vendors (ISV's) to Linux. The attitude of "tough shit if your program
which took ten man-years to development uses Posix Threads" isn't hardly
calculated to encourage those ISV's to port their product Linux.
If you will recall, a long time ago, back in the Linux kernel 0.10 days,
Linus explained that when he found a portability problem with an
application, if the issue was with POSIX.1 compliance, he would fix the
kernel instead of modifying the application. That's what got us to
where we are today. Telling people to screw standards and use a linux
specific interface might be what we have to do in the short-run, but I
don't think it works for the long-term.
- Ted
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