[TUHS] Re: Porting Unix v6 to i386

[wkt@minnie.tuhs.org (Warren Toomey)]

In article by P.A.Osborne:
> [V6 is well described in the Lions Commentary]
> My thoughts exactly funnily enough.

Well, seeing as though Paul referred to me (see below), I'll throw my
own $0.02 in. I'd recommend V7 for several reasons:

	- it's more portable
	- the flavour of C used is more modern
	- it's got more useful applications (yacc etc.)
	- you get the stdio library
	- one last thing, there were some awful race conditions and
	  bogosities in V6 that just had to be fixed. See the
	  `50 bugs' tape, and also Dennis' own admission about
	  6th Edition savu/retu at
	  http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/odd.html
 
> Pondering just this over the weekend has left me wondering whether 
> MiniUnix would be a better initial place to start - as its essentially 
> V6, but without memory management or pipes.   Which as a starting point 
> for the experiment may be an easier place to start.

You could port that in a short amount of time, and treat it as a
warming-up exercise!
 
> Also as a sideline,  I don't know how the list owner of this list
> feels about this discussion potentially swamping the list.

I think the list needs some traffic :-) It might be worth setting up
a list for the e-mails between co-developers, but also to have periodic
status reports and questions sent to this list.

> That way those of 
> us who are regarded as sad, mad or just plain losers can take our
> mutterings somewhere else.

Why do you think I set this list up in the first place ;-) ??!

Cheers,
	Warren