[12974] in Athena Bugs
rsaix 7.7F: Cygnus gcc & Ted
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (cfields@MIT.EDU)
Fri Dec 2 15:04:29 1994
From: cfields@MIT.EDU
Date: Fri, 2 Dec 1994 15:03:48 +0500
To: jhawk@MIT.EDU
Cc: tytso@MIT.EDU, bugs@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: [12971]
> Run gcc from the cygnus locker with a nonstandard PATH.
As I understand it, if you use a nonstandard path the consequences are
your responsibility; we do not generally support user environments
hacked to that degree.
> $machtype = `machtype`; chop $machtype;
>
> should read:
>
> $machtype = `/bin/athena/machtype`; chop $machtype;
We discourage the hard-coding of paths into programs in general.
First, it makes programs impossible to replace by simply putting
something new at the front of your path to replace it. This is
sometimes, but not usually, desirable.
Second, we provide the /srvd/patch mechanism:
echo $athena_path
/srvd/patch /usr/athena/bin /bin/athena /usr/bin/X11 /usr/new
/usr/ucb /bin /usr/bin /usr/ibm /usr/andrew/bin
ls -l /srvd/patch
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root 43 Jun 17 09:55 /srvd/patch ->
/afs/athena.mit.edu/system/patch.77/decmips
so that we can quickly and easily fix broken software when required.
The hard-coding of paths defeats this mechanism. [Forget for now that
this mechanism is once again broken on the Suns. January.]
> It has been suggested to me by an
> over-the-shoulder reader that it is reasonable to attempt
> to invoke machtype prior to /bin/athena/machtype
This would probably be acceptable, and it would not hurt to try to be
a little more robust in this way.
However, our standard environment also sets the environment variable
hosttype which contains the same value machtype returns.
In the near future, we will also be setting the environment variable
ATHENA_SYS (which will oh so concidentally return the value returned
by fs sysname for a particular platform) along with guidelines on how
to organize lockers using it.
I shall not comment on the insidiousness of perl.
Craig Fields
I/S DCNS Development
cfields@mit.edu
