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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!solace!dataphone!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!nntp-hub.barrnet.net!parc!kedwards 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 Lines: 27 Distribution: inet Message-ID: <587jrv$9rf@news.parc.xerox.com> References: <32986299.AC7@mail.esrin.esa.it> <casper.32a1813c@mail.fwi.uva.nl> <57v6em$p73@helena.MT.net> <casper.32a3e5ae@mail.fwi.uva.nl> <580sgh$kpi@panix2.panix.com> <casper.32a40b7b@mail.fwi.uva.nl> NNTP-Posting-Host: turbodog.parc.xerox.com X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 #8 (NOV) Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.solaris:91495 comp.unix.bsd.misc:1681 comp.unix.internals:11463 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 -- ---- keith edwards xerox palo alto research center