[3] in Locker Maintainers
IRIX 6.3 support
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Greg Hudson)
Fri Nov 7 01:38:42 1997
Date: Fri, 7 Nov 1997 01:37:32 -0500
From: Greg Hudson <ghudson@MIT.EDU>
To: locker-maintainers@MIT.EDU
Cc: dalmeida@MIT.EDU, dkk@MIT.EDU, kcr@MIT.EDU, mbarker@MIT.EDU, seph@MIT.EDU
So, Athena is about to start testing support for a new platform, IRIX
6.3. So far, only SIPB and the release engineers have machines, but I
hope that can be corrected over the next little while. This is the
first time, I believe, that we will have full-fledged support for two
versions of the same machine type for an extended period of time. As
such, people need to think carefully about what to do with their
lockers.
A few pieces of important factual data: the O2s have an ATHENA_SYS of
"sgi_63" and a HOSTTYPE of "sgi". IRIX 6.3 does not run on the Indys,
which will continue to run 5.3 until next summer, at which point they
will switch to 6.2 or (if a miracle happens) both platforms will
switch to 6.5.
Your options are:
* Create a symlink arch/sgi_63 -> sgi_53. (Or ->
../machtype/sgi, for you sipb locker folks.) This option
restricts you to having no native IRIX 6.3 binaries, and
runs the risk that locker maintainers may build things on a
6.3 machine by mistake.
* Create a symlink farm in arch/sgi_63/bin. This option still
carries the risk of locker maintainers installing things
through symlinks by mistake, but it allows you to have
native 6.3 binaries and may reduce the risks some.
* Build new binaries into arch/sgi_63/bin; that is, treat IRIX
6.3 as an entirely separate platform. This option is the
most work, but it carries the least risk. If you need to
request a new volume for IRIX 6.3, that ought to be
reasonable. (The athena cell is, I believe, prepared to
accept such requests; the sipb cell is a little tight on
space but that should be alleviated tomorrow evening.)
The outland locker has opted for the symlink farm. I am pushing for
the windowmanagers locker to use entirely new volume, and have
requested a new volume for the gnu locker.
This list is for discussion as well as announcements (that's why it
has individuals only right now), so feel free to disagree with me or
otherwise comment.
