[GLLUG] MAC G5 1.8dual

[Philip Robar]

On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 6:49 AM, Clay Dowling <clay at lazarusid.com> wrote:

> On 10/02/2012 07:49 PM, Robar Philip wrote:
>
>> This is simply not true. Unlike Linux, OS X is UNIX®.
>>
> Maybe OS X is somehow more pure. I haven't used SVR4 in a very long time.
> Linux, FreeBSD and OpenBSD are all more like each other than they are like
> OS X. Software written for those three is trivially easy to port among the
> three, but porting to OS X is much more involved. For binary software
> written in C an C++, it's easier to port to Windows than to OS X.
>

I don't agree. Apple covers this quite clearly and succinctly here:


https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/porting/conceptual/portingunix/intro/intro.html

It's no more difficult than any other UNIX port. Even the GNU auto* crap is
supported. And there's an extensive ports collection at
http://www.macports.org/.

Most UNIX porting problems are due to people (authors and porters) being
varying combinations of lazy, ignorant and/or incompetent. Stick to
standardized APIs, don't use proprietary/GNU extensions, maybe read a book
or two on how to write UNIX® and portable code (or how to write code well
in the first place)--be happy. [1]



> So whatever the purity of OS X, it's not like the other UNIX systems that
> are familiar to most UNIX users. Similar, but definitely different. I use
> Linux, OpenBSD and OS X every day for my job. The similarity is
> appreciated, but the differences can also be frustrating at times. Our IT
> staff is even more outspoken about the frustrations of the differences.


And the same could be said about Solaris, AIX, and HPUX. All of which are
UNIX®. All have extensive and elaborate features, and support frameworks
that are unique to their platform. What can I say, we live in an imperfect
world. You pick your poison and live with it. (Of course, IMHO Solaris
would be the best choice, but my years at Sun may make me a little biased.
;-)


Phil

[1] Lets face it, the percentage of so-called professional programmers
who've actually read at least one of Stevens/Rago, Singh, Teer, Rochkind or
Kerrisk, let alone any of the many fine how to program UNIX books (say
Kernighan, Raymond, or van der Linden just to name a few) is probably in
the single digits percentage wise.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.egr.msu.edu/mailman/public/linux-user/attachments/20121003/303c5107/attachment.html>