[178] in Release_7.7_team
release request: /bin/athena/tcsh
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (yandros@MIT.EDU)
Mon Oct 17 11:40:22 1994
From: yandros@MIT.EDU
Date: Mon, 17 Oct 94 11:40:12 -0400
To: release-team@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <9410171525.AA04487@pianoforte.MIT.EDU> (message from Dorothy Bowe on Mon, 17 Oct 1994 11:25:07 EDT)
I'd like to suggest that /bin/athena/tcsh be standardized across all
supported platforms. Currently, Athena offers its users no shell that
is the same on all supported platforms, requiring ugly hacks that end
users don't understand and shouldn't need in order to `make things
work'. Working in OLC, in SIPB, and on instance help, I've helped
well more than a hundred (probably in excess of two hundred) users get
around this problem. This issue keeps came up with the integration of
the RS/6000 (where OLC and bugs were inundated with bug reports about
`set lineedit' not working) and again with the Sun; future platforms
are only going to exacerbate the situation, as more and more users
simply accept that `Athena is broken' when their prompt is screwed up
when they log in on different types of machines (I can not remember
how many times I've heard that comment in clusters).
As a small part of my work this past summer with DCNS, I prepared a
short report on the differences between `/bin/athena/tcsh' on athena
RS/6000's and suns and the stock Cornell Tcsh distribution from which
it was derived. I looked at the differences between /bin/athena/tcsh
on the DECstation and stock Cornell Tcsh, but the differences are many
and not easily quantifiable; I could certainly prepare a short
document on the important differences between the two if it were so
desired.
Thank you for your consideration.
chad
