IEEE Software blurb on 4.4BSD release

[Chris Torek]

In article <3465 at phri.UUCP> roy at phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) writes:
>	On page 94 of the September 1988 IEEE Software is an interesting
>little blub about 4.4BSD Unix.

Take any predictions about future Berkeley releases with a few truckloads
of salt (or perhaps just several shakers if the prediction is from UCB).
I seem to recall much Deeming of Doom two years ago claiming that 4.3BSD
would be the last BSD.

Here are the facts (as I know them):

	4.3BSD exists.  It runs on VAXen.

	A later release called 4.3BSD-tahoe exists.  It runs on VAXen
	and Tahoes.  The tape from Berkeley is configured only for the
	Tahoe series, and reconfiguration for the VAX is not trivial
	(despite the fact that the same source tree had been compiled
	on a VAX not very many months before that release).

	The system in use at Berkeley is several minor changes past
	4.3BSD-tahoe; more changes, including a POSIX-compatible tty
	driver, are in progress at Berkeley, and others, including OSI
	protocol support, are in progress outside Berkeley.  Which of
	these, if any, will be in 4.4BSD, if it is called that, is
	uncertain, if indeed anything is released, at which time no one
	can foretell.  (Incidentally, you can get the ISO environment
	[ISODE] now, and you could get it some time ago too.  It is not
	new, although it is ever-changing.)

>Here's a particularly interesting quote:
>
>	"... the BSD 4.4 version scheduled for release in 1989 -- the
>	same time the AT&T-Sun Unix is scheduled for release -- will
>	not include some AT&T-Sun extensions to BSD 4.2.  For example,
>	BSD4.4 will use a new file system, not the proprietary system
>	Sun has contributed to the AT&T-Sun Unix."

>	My main reaction to that is "Huh?!"  Where do I begin?  What new
>file sytem in 4.4?  Why?  Are we talking some new major file system
>redesign like what happened with 4.2 or just some tinkering?  And what
>proprietary file system from Sun?  Last I heard, Sun uses the normal 4.2BSD
>file system.  Are we talking yet another file system?  If so, why?  And is
>there really going to be a 4.4?  Is it going to include native NFS or are
>we going to have to stick with MtXinu to get that?

Here is how I read `between the lines':

	The `proprietary system' is NFS, and in particular, NFS's vnode
	internals.  The NFS specification is public, but the actual
	implementation is not, so that part of the statement is not
	wrong, merely misleading.

	The `new file system' is Berkeley's redesign of vnodes.  In
	particular, Berkeley's (Kirk's) design (as yet unimplemented)
	includes some operations not included in Sun's vnodes, and is
	structured slightly differently.  Berkeley's implementation
	will, of course, not be the same as Sun's, so that part of the
	statement is not wrong, merely misleading.  The intent is to
	interoperate with NFS, but be better.

	4.4BSD is tenatively predicted to be in releasable shape
	sometime in 1989, so that part of the statement is not wrong,
	merely misleading.

All in all, I would say IEEE's editors did fairly well in dealing with
a subject as nebulous as `the next Berkeley Software Distribution'.
(Advertisers dislike magazines that are nebulous, as they leave buyers
unwilling to invest until the nebulous solidifies into reality.
Editors thus pressure writers to be concrete; writers thus make
up---perhaps unconsciously---the facts they need to finish the article.)
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris at mimsy.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris