[2320] in testers
Re: sun4 7.6F: $bindir and @sys on solaris
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey)
Mon Aug 2 17:20:22 1993
Date: Mon, 2 Aug 1993 17:20:00 -0400 (EDT)
From: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
To: sparc@MIT.EDU, testers@MIT.EDU, Derek Atkins <warlord@MIT.EDU>
Cc: bug-sparc@MIT.EDU, bug-afs@MIT.EDU, warlord@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <9307290111.AA00526@deathtongue.MIT.EDU>
There has been far too much heat and far insufficient light on the
$bindir issue.
After discussion with various developers and users, I announce this as
the direction we will take in resolving the $bindir situation:
1. $bindir under SunOS 4 will get a different value from $bindir under
Solaris 2.
2. in the long term we expect machtype will migrate to returning the
SAME value as @sys.
The current situation is a decidedly non-ideal one:
We operated for a long time on the very strong assurance that SunOS 4
was going AWAY and that we were best making the migration path from
SunOS4 to Solaris2 one way.
We operated on a pedagogy that machtype returned the HARDWARE machine type.
We kept forgetting that $bindir was taken from machtype and REQUIRES
awareness of both hardware and operating system.
Transarc does not yet ship a port of AFS which makes a distinction
between 4c and 4m hardware platforms. We do not build Solaris AFS, and
we want to get out of the business of compiling AFS on all platforms.
For now, we're going to have to be mature professional adults and live
with the following:
1. The Athena Public Suns have machtype returning sun4.
2. The Athena Public Suns have $bindir set to sun4bin.
3. Redoing machtype and bindir is TOO RADICAL a change for a bug-fix
release, and will have to wait until we do another major release. (When
that time comes we will probably phase in machtype returning sun4c_52
and sun4m_52.)
4. New work for Sparc SunOS4 platforms that will not run on Sun Solaris
machines in compatibility mode will live in a new Machtype, sun4_411
matching @sys.
5. Some people will not like 1-4 above. Those of us with the skill and
the desire to help will have to help out and make sym-link farms and
wrapper scripts during this transition time.
Anyone who has a real problem with this is cordially invited to discuss
it in person with me in my office.
-wdc
