The Unix Heritage Society mailing list
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com>
To: Warren Toomey <wkt@tuhs.org>
Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] execl and execv, first appearance in unix
Date: Sun, 22 Mar 2020 16:03:20 -0600	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CANCZdfo+_g3mp2zaZOMR3=8mnyNsEKK5kiNCa=qc1kmEHowLww@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20200322214434.GB13820@minnie.tuhs.org>

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2563 bytes --]

Hey Warren,

On Sun, Mar 22, 2020 at 3:44 PM Warren Toomey <wkt@tuhs.org> wrote:

> On Sun, Mar 22, 2020 at 02:49:03PM -0600, Warner Losh wrote:
> >    On Sun, Mar 22, 2020 at 2:20 PM Warren Toomey <[1]wkt@tuhs.org>
> wrote:
> >
> >      On Sun, Mar 22, 2020 at 09:58:29AM -0600, Warner Losh wrote:
> >      > "from a working C compiler for 2nd Edition UNIX."
> >      > Does anybody know for sure, or can provide more insight into the
> >      last1120c.tar.g
> >      > z file to help disambiguate?
> >      Yes, all the details are on Dennis' web page:
> >      [2]https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/primevalC.html
> >
> >    Magic historical 8-ball sez: situation unclear, try again.
> >    So could be 2nd, 3rd or 4th edition given the date range.
>
> Someone from the Labs here on the list might be able to clarify. I'm sure
> I heard that they start with the PDP-11/20 and got an 11/45 around the time
> of Second Edition. So the "last1120c" was the C compiler around the time of
> Second Edition.
>

According to my history of early unix talk, they started to transition to
11/45 in the 2nd edition, and had completed the rewrite by the 4th
edition.  The 2nd and 3rd editions had, at least according to their intros,
some support for the 11/20, but it is ambiguous now that I re-read it:

2nd edition (June '72)

"Also, not all installations have the latest version of all the software.
In particular, the assembler and loader have just undergone major
reorganizations in anticipation of a UNIX for the PDP-11/45"

3rd Edition goes farther (Mar '73):

"In particular, any system which uses a PDP-11/20 processor will not
include all the software described herein, nor will the software behave in
the same way. The second, or even the first edition of this manual is
likely to be more appropriate."

By the 4th edition (Nov '73), The PDP-11/20 is gone, not even referenced....

"In particular, the information in this manual applies only to UNIX systems
which operate under the C language versions of the system. Installations
which use older versions of UNIX will find earlier editions of this manual
more appropriate to their situation."

So the outward messaging of the manual, at least, was "We're running away
from the 11/20, and you should too if you want to run the latest code." But
it's not clear to me, since we don't have good sources from the actual 2nd
or 3rd edition to trace where this came in, or if the 11/20 lived on a
little past the 4th edition and had sources freshly loaded on it sometime
after the compiler was written...

Warner

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 3449 bytes --]

      reply	other threads:[~2020-03-22 22:04 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 5+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2020-03-22 15:58 Warner Losh
2020-03-22 20:20 ` Warren Toomey
2020-03-22 20:49   ` Warner Losh
2020-03-22 21:44     ` Warren Toomey
2020-03-22 22:03       ` Warner Losh [this message]

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to='CANCZdfo+_g3mp2zaZOMR3=8mnyNsEKK5kiNCa=qc1kmEHowLww@mail.gmail.com' \
    --to=imp@bsdimp.com \
    --cc=tuhs@tuhs.org \
    --cc=wkt@tuhs.org \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).