[TUHS] Re: Version 256 of systemd boasts '42% less Unix philosophy' The Register

[Chet Ramey via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org>]

[-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2159 bytes --]

On 6/21/24 12:06 PM, Henry Bent wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Jun 2024 at 11:47, Chet Ramey via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org 
> <mailto:tuhs@tuhs.org>> wrote:
> 
>     On 6/20/24 4:12 PM, ron minnich wrote:
> 
>      > Personally, the autoconfig process does not fill me with confidence,
>     and it
>      > was recently responsible for a very serious security problem. And,
>      > autoconfig doesn't work: I've lost track of how many times autoconf has
>      > failed for me. In general, in my experience, autoconf makes for less
>      > portability, not more.
> 
>     I'd be interested in some examples of this. I've had pretty decent success
>     with autoconf-based portability.
> 
> 
> I think it's important to make a distinction between autotools not working 
> and  the actual software distribution not being buildable.
> 
> For example, I've recently been working with Ultrix V4.5.  Most configure 
> scripts are able to complete successfully with ksh or sh5, so I don't 
> absolutely need bash (even though I do have it and use it).  The 
> difficulties begin when trying to compile the actual code; for example, 
> Ultrix doesn't have strdup(). 

For most projects, OS releases that ancient are not supported. It's the
code author using some base minimum for assumptions -- OSs from the past
35 years or so should be safe (dating from the 4.4 BSD release, to use
the strdup() example). Maybe that's the "code author not considering,"
but I'd say that's the result of the author simply not being interested
in something that old.

Bash ran on 4.3 BSD for a long time (and may still, I haven't checked with
that project maintainer in a while), and I ran bash-5.0 on OPENSTEP 4.2
because I like it, but I'd say those are exceptions.

I guess what I'm saying is that it's not the author's fault for not wanting
to support OS versions released, for a significant percentage, before they
were born. They have different priorities.

-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
		 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU    chet@case.edu    http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/


[-- Attachment #2: OpenPGP digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 203 bytes --]