Date: Sun, 27 Oct 2002 18:04:03 GMT From: Mark Valentine <mark@thuvia.demon.co.uk> To: Garrett Wollman <wollman@lcs.mit.edu> Cc: standards@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Why I am opposed to a Standards Ghetto Message-ID: <200210271804.g9RI433K039769@dotar.thuvia.org> In-Reply-To: <200210271724.g9RHObQ2031513@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu>
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> From: Garrett Wollman <wollman@lcs.mit.edu> > Date: Sun 27 Oct, 2002 > Subject: Re: Why I am opposed to a Standards Ghetto > If we were going to go down this road, the only implementation I could > reasonably support would be an environment variable which downgraded > from standard to ``like it was in FreeBSD 4.x'' -- with the default > being standards-compliant. The problem here is that this requires end user action to get "broken" software working again, and it's still not clear what that action is. Consider my example situation with an end user unfamiliar with shell programming and with a "broken" and no longer supported product. It's going to take a *lot* of head scratching to figure out he has to set this environment variable. Even then, where does he set it? In his .profile? That breaks any software he runs which assumes the environment is Standards compliant (e.g. stuff written for FreeBSD 5.0). And it won't help parts of the product started from /etc/rc or from cron(1). > Perhaps something like this: > > - Deprecate EXPR_COMPAT. > - Define a new standard environment variable, _FreeBSD_4_COMPAT, the > value of which can be either the empty string or a list of programs to > be affected. > - Add a new library routine, int check_utility_compat(const char > *utility), which centralizes checking for this environment variable. > - Update expr(1) and sort(1) to be the first clients. This may be a little neater than the current implementation, but it's effectively functionally equivalent - just uses another environment variable - and doesn't actually help solve the problem. Sorry. Cheers, Mark. -- Mark Valentine, Thuvia Labs <mark@thuvia.co.uk> <http://www.thuvia.co.uk>; "Tigers will do ANYTHING for a tuna fish sandwich." Mark Valentine uses "We're kind of stupid that way." *munch* *munch* and endorses FreeBSD -- <http://www.calvinandhobbes.com>; <http://www.freebsd.org>; To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-standards" in the body of the message
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