how brain dead is AIX?

[Mark Brown]

In article <508 at ss01.pppl.gov@ccc.nmfecc.gov> jsm at ss01.pppl.gov@ccc.nmfecc.gov (John Scott McCauley Jr.) writes:
>I have a copy of 'IBM RISC System/6000 Software Offerings Overview' brochure.
>I am a little worried about two of the statements made: 
>A) When there are conflicts, they are resolved with priority 1) POSIX
>	2) SVID 3) 4.3 BSD 4) AIX/RT. (p. 3). 
>   I gather that AIX is System V kernel with the Berkeley stuff emulated.
>   So, do you get:
>     1) the System V file system or the 'Berkeley Fast File System'
An AIX fs that handles 255-char filenames, BSD and S5 structs, etc.
>     2) streams or sockets
Both, I believe.
>     3) job control (control-Z)
POSIX
>     4) AT&T or Berkeley terminal device driver.
Both: switchable on the command line or via ioctl. Also, if switched by ioctl,
the ability to switch back to the old one, which was stored when you made the
change.
>
>B) 'Most 4.3 BSD commands, system calls, and library routines are supported.'
> 	(p.3) and features include a '4.3 BSD compatibility library'.  (p.5)
>  Ok, what is missing? 
Not very much. The most pain you are likely to see is the need to use a special
-D flag and a special BSD library if you want 'old-fashioned' (non-standard)
signal and wait behaviors...
>
>One more question: we already have several BSDish systems (Dec- and Sparc-
>  stations).  Things are currently seamless: all programs we have needed so far
>  will compile on both and run fine on both. Would the same be true of an AIX
>  system? Will we have to hire someone full time to support the AIX? How many
>  lines like '#ifdef AIX' are there in the source code for gnu-emacs? X11R4?
You *shouldn't* have much trouble in the released version, other than the time
it takes to RTM to find out the compiler flags needed to compile for your
particular code (remember, we default to standards behavior -- BSD{43|tahoe}
is *not* standards conformant...)


Mark Brown   IBM AWD / OSF  |  "The tricky part is common usage."
The Good     mbrown at osf.org |
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