From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <284949CC-81F5-4791-91C1-13357BC23E7D@9srv.net> References: <703b2539-027e-4f9f-a739-00b59f6d3d82@v28g2000vbb.googlegroups.com> <20101113192425.GC22589@nibiru.local> <284949CC-81F5-4791-91C1-13357BC23E7D@9srv.net> Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2010 01:26:52 -0500 Message-ID: Subject: Re: [9fans] Plan9 development From: Russ Cox To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Topicbox-Message-UUID: 7d046f62-ead6-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 > When I write C code which I intend to be portable, I write against p9p, ... I don't think this is fair to Gary's well-reasoned mail. He explicitly said libtool was solving the problem of providing a single consistent command line tool that handled the job of building a *shared library* on a variety of different systems. Plan9port mostly addresses the problem of providing a consistent C programming interface (library code) across a variety of different systems. There are the 9c and 9l scripts, but they are hardly a paragon of virtue and don't even bother trying to create shared libraries. That is, libtool says "you want to make shared libraries; I can help." Plan9port says "sorry, shared libraries are too hard; don't do that." Either approach could be valid depending on the context. A lot of people here on 9fans lump all GNU software together, but the different pieces can be very different, and there are good ones. To point some of those out: GNU awk is a nice piece of software. The core of GNU grep is very well written even if the surrounding utility has been embellished a bit too much. Groff is certainly less buggy and more capable than troff, though Heirloom troff probably beats them both. Russ