[9fans] Various distributions

[9fans] Various distributions

[Peter Hull]

 Sorry for this extremely basic question but I'm a bit confused about
the various plan9 distributions.
As I understand it, 9front is a fork of the original plan 9 from Bell
Labs and 9atom consists of enhancements to plan9.
All three seem to be under development, but: Are changes being pulled
from one to the other, or are they slowly diverging? And, does the
recent announcement regarding GPLv2 have any bearing on the situation?
Thanks for any comments,
Pete

Re: [9fans] Various distributions

[Kurt H Maier]

Quoting Peter Hull <peterhull90@gmail.com>:

> Sorry for this extremely basic question but I'm a bit confused about
> the various plan9 distributions.
> As I understand it, 9front is a fork of the original plan 9 from Bell
> Labs and 9atom consists of enhancements to plan9.
> All three seem to be under development, but: Are changes being pulled
> from one to the other, or are they slowly diverging? And, does the
> recent announcement regarding GPLv2 have any bearing on the situation?
> Thanks for any comments,
> Pete

There's not a formal treaty signed amongst the nation-states.  They're all
open source and they're all free to pull code from one another.  They are
each the products of their creators and to my knowledge there is no guiding
manifesto for any of them.

khm

Re: [9fans] Various distributions

[Anthony Sorace]

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This is all my read on the situation only. I use 9atom and track
the mainline closely, but only casually track 9front.

The mainline Plan 9 distribution from Bell Labs is managed very
conservatively, from an external point of view. Both 9atom and,
later, 9front were started because that didn't work for the folks
who created those distributions, in different ways. It may be
fair to say both started as a way to get improved hardware
support into a publicly-accessible distribution quickly, although
there have since been many other changes in each system.

9atom often pulls in changes from 9front and the mainline. I
believe 9front watches the other two, as well (although I'm not
sure how closely). As far as I'm aware, the mainline only
considers changes in the others if they're explicitly submitted
as patches.

9atom is, procedurally, very similar to mainline: you submit
changes via patches, sources and everything else is available
via 9p, and so on. It also puts similar weight on compatibility
and similar concerns. 9front is a more radical departure for
Plan 9 (in some ways making it more recognizable for those
coming from elsewhere in the Open Source world), with a
Mercurial repository and a conventional issue tracker and the
like. It is also has a bit more of an experimental character
regarding changes to the system.

The GPL thing has no bearing on any of these distributions.

Anthony


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Re: [9fans] Various distributions

[erik quanstrom]

> 9atom is, procedurally, very similar to mainline: you submit
> changes via patches, sources and everything else is available
> via 9p, and so on. It also puts similar weight on compatibility
> and similar concerns. 9front is a more radical departure for

contributions will be welcomed to the greatest extent possible.
the bias is to put changes in.  if there are style issues a little too
large to ignore, or bugs, then the author may be asked to correct
these and resubmit.  at least that's the ideal.  :-)

there are a few differences i'd like to mention.
1.  all changes are done via patches.  the patch list is sources at 9atom dot
org.  send email to sources dash owner at 9atom dot org to subscribe,
or send me email directly.

2.  anyone with an account has the ability to comment on outstanding
patches with apatch/note.  send me email if you'd like an account.
i think more discussion around patches is better.

cheers

- erik