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

[Paul Ruizendaal <pnr@planet.nl>]

Below an update with comments reflected.

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After the Seventh Edition, the VAX became the base machine for further Unix development. The initial code base was the 32V port, enhanced with selected elements from 4.1BSD, such as support for virtual memory and later the TCP/IP stack. From there the code further evolved and an Eighth Edition manual was completed by Bell Laboratories in February 1985, six years after 7th Edition. The 8th Edition source code was not as widely distributed as the 6th and 7th Edition sources had been.

The file system in 8th Edition was rewritten to work with a bitmapped free list and allocation clusters of 4KB (8 blocks); it also supported the V7 filesystem for backwards compatibility with disk clusters of 1, 2 or 4 blocks.

Key innovations in the 8th Edition kernel include ‘streams’ and the 'file system switch’, which allowed the “everything is a file” approach to be extended to new areas. Three notable developments built on these were the ‘/proc’ file system and new debugger API, a unified approach to networking over Datakit, TCP/IP and phone lines, and a network file system.

Eighth Edition is also at the root of graphical user interfaces on Unix, being the platform used for the development of the ‘Blit’ graphical terminal.

Several of the new ideas from Eighth Edition found their way into the 3rd release of System V, although in a much modified form.

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> On Sat, Apr 11, 2020 at 1:35 AM Paul Ruizendaal <pnr@planet.nl> wrote:
>> 
>> Warren has been nice enough to put 8th, 9th and 10th edition on the TUHS “Unix Tree” web page.
>> 
>> There is the following question on each entry web page: “Who wants to write something here?”
>> 
>> Below my suggested draft text for Eight Edition. All suggestions for improvement welcome.
>> 
>> ===
>> 
>> Shortly after the release of 7th Edition, the VAX became the base machine for further Unix development. The initial code base was the 32V port, enhanced with selected elements from 4.1BSD, such as support for virtual memory and later the TCP/IP stack. From there the code further evolved: Eighth Edition of Unix was released by Bell Laboratories in February 1985, six years after Seventh Edition.
>> 
>> Key innovations in 8th Edition include ‘streams’ and the 'file system switch’, which allowed the “everything is a file” approach to be extended to new areas. Three notable applications built on these were the ‘/proc’ file system and new debugger API, a unified approach to networking over Datakit, TCP/IP and phone lines, and a network file system.
>> 
>> Eighth Edition is also at the root of graphical user interfaces on Unix, being the platform used for the development of the ‘Blit’ graphical terminal.
>> 
>> Several of the new ideas from Eigth Edition found their way into the 3rd release of System V, although in a much modified way.
>> 
>> ===
>>