Re: [TUHS] V8, V9 and V10 now in the "Unix Tree"

[norman@oclsc.org (Norman Wilson)]

Doug McIlroy:

  The v8 manual was printed in 1985, but the system was
  not "released" in the ordinary sense until a couple of
  years ago. Some v8 features made it out into the world
  via USG; some were described in open literature or
  Usenix presentations, but I believe none were formally
  shipped out of the company.

I'm surprised; I thought copies of the V8 manual existed
when I arrived at the Labs in mid-1984, but the date on
the title page is indeed February 1985.

There was no general release of V8 like those for earlier
Research systems, but there was a quasi-official V8 tape
sent to a handful of universities under a special letter
agreement.  I remember working on that with Dennis,
checking that everything compiled and worked properly
in a chroot environment before the tape was written.
I think that happened in the summer of 1985.

I don't remember our doing that work, to make a single
coherent consistency-checked release tape, for any
subsequent system; just one-off caveat-emptor snapshots.

Norman Wilson
Toronto ON