Re: solaris practical for home users?

From: Dragan Cvetkovic (me_at_privacy.net)
Date: 09/19/03 

Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2003 15:46:35 -0400

Paul Eggert <eggert@twinsun.com> writes:
> At Fri, 19 Sep 2003 06:41:55 GMT, phil+s3@bolthole.no-bots.com (Philip Brown) writes:
>
>> the trend for "open cross platform software" became subverted by
>> "stuff that works on my l1nux box"

[snip]
>
> Here's one example: I recently fixed a portability bug in a script
> that did something like this:
>
> if test -L foo
> then echo foo is a symbolic link
> fi
>
> This script works on GNU/Linux, OpenBSD, etc. It's portable POSIX
> code. It also works on Solaris 9. But it doesn't work on Solaris 8
> /bin/sh (which supports only "test -h", not "test -L"). The author of
> the script doesn't use Solaris, so he didn't know that particular
> porting quirk. But it would be entirely unfair to accuse him of
> writing just "stuff that works on my GNU/Linux box".
>

Paul, according to http://www.opengroup.org/, both '-h' and '-L' were added
to test in issue 6. The fact that it works on Linux, OpenBSD etc is
probably because bash supports it (I think so ...).

I think that what Phil was complaning about is the use of non-standard,
Linux specific intefaces (like /proc).

After all, if you develop a program in and on Solaris and you want it to be
multi-platform, you will avoid Solaris specific stuff like /proc or
doors or remote shared memory or ...

The same principle should apply for Linux developers.

Stick to POSIX (OK, above example with 'test' is more exception to the
rule). Be conservative. Read (I know you know all that, this was more of a
general remark).

Bye, Dragan 

-- 
Dragan Cvetkovic, 
To be or not to be is true. G. Boole      No it isn't.  L. E. J. Brouwer
!!! Sender/From address is bogus. Use reply-to one !!!

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