Sun poised to take open-source Solaris step

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Interchangeability of solaris and linux

``I've seen everything above the kernel compile and run on solaris, so surely Posix compliance isn't such an issue is it?''

The biggest and oldest difference of UNIX (POSIX really) and Linux is the pthreads and the signal handling semantics. The Linux threads (old model) has hounted people who tried to port UNIX apps to linux. There are many people in the embedded/RT communities which have interest in Linux becomming fully compliant. The NPTL is much closer to the standard.

Linux apps, like GUIs, etc. should compile and run on Solaris with little effort. It would be useful if linux apps can compile and run out of the box with the SUN's workshop compiler. That would make porting to solaris (Ultra or x86) easy. No as long as Linux becomes closer to POSIX, porting from Solaris to Linux should become easy too.


``The problem with POSIX is that there are multiple standards, one released every few years. Currently I think on AIX is fully up to date.
Some folks have gone down the route of LSB (linux standards base) which I think is going to be an ISO standard. LSB is good because it doesn't require the payment of fees, unlike Posix, and therefore is OpenSource and FreeSoftware friendly
(there is no reason why Solaris can't be LSB compliant).''

There is one but evolving standard and there are different levels of compliance. This process is managed by the OpenGroup (see their .org site) and the evolution brings additions/extensions to the previous standard only. This group is made up of practitioners and academicians. Changes to the API or even the semantics are resisted for the benefit of not breaking existing code.

Members from the Linux community started participating actively a few years ago and had a say in the formation / consolidation of OpenGroup/POSIX/ISO standards to one single base. As a matter of fact LSB is a standard that is getting closer to be a consistent 'part' of the opengroup standards. Even MS had been participating, presummably because they want to keep abreast on the changes and maybe provide a POSIX subsystem in their ms windows as they did in the past.

AIX is branded as a 'true' UNIX system but working with is much quirkier than working on Solaris or even IRIX which is not 'compliant'.

-m

Posted by: michael-t   Posted on: 01/24/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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