On Thu, Feb 20, 2020, 4:51 PM Doug McIntyre <merlyn@geeks.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Feb 19, 2020 at 11:18:53AM -0900, Michael Huff wrote:
> > It was said earlier that SunOS included a compiler, but it was dropped
> > in Solaris. Was it possible for people to carry over the old SunOS
> > compiler and use it on Solaris? Did people do that, or did they just
> > have their companies spring for the actual Solaris compiler?
>
> SunOS's compiler that shipped with it wasn't that usable. It didn't fully
> support
> the C standards at the time.
>
> It was used primarily for two things.
>
> *) To compile the few kernel objects that were shipped as source & to
> link in all the binary objects into one new kernel for patching/tuning.
>
> *) To bootstrap GCC so one had a usable compiler to build packages. GCC
> had special code used for the bootstrap process specificly at the time
> on SunOS, written in a level that the SunOS compiler could deal with.
>
> Otherwise, it could only be used for simple projects.
>
> As others stated, the output of the compiler would have been a.out, and
> not ELF like Solaris 2.x would have needed.
>
> Some people equate SunOS from a time when all Unices still had (usable)
> compilers,
> but that was actually an earlier time frame. Sun was selling its
> standards compliant compilers for SunOS before Solaris 2.x was around.
>

IIRC, The K&R compiler was free. The ANSI 89 one cost $$$. It was this
change in policy that caused much consternation in the Sun users community.
It happened around 91 or 92.

Warner

>