X (was: New version of capabilities patch online, some more status)

[richard offer]

* $ from thompson at argus-systems.com at "1-May: 3:03pm" | sed "1,$s/^/* /"
*
*
*
* One issue to rolling the modifications into the main tree is going to be the
* various differences between Trusted Operating Systems.  We will all likely
want to
* get the tree running on our platforms.

If the first platform to have a useable T6 is BSD I'm quite willing to use that
to get X working.

* There are going to be at least three
* mainstream API variants in the near future (Argus PitBull on Solaris, AIX,
Linux,
* and UnixWare), TrustedBSD (on FreeBSD), and the forthcoming (this is
correct?) SGI
* port (on Linux).  While it seems unlikely that we will all agree on a mutual
API,
* it is probably in all of our interests to have a good discussion on
portability
* issues between APIs for application level development.


In an ideal world, I'd like to see one userland set of APIs, two I could live
with, three and we're now getting into problems.


Being a user-level person, I don't really care that the kernels are all
different, I care that I have to port my application code to three different
APIs. For those APIs that are common (say regular expressions) thats bad
enough, but for un-common APIs (this work) that's only going to lead to
problems, with lack of coverage and a smaller user base. And presumably we're
all going to be contributing our patches back to the authors...As an author,
the last thing I'd want to do is modify my code three times for the same niche
market with no way to test interopability.

Historicaly, we've all had existing baggage to carry along with us, now we have
the option of working out these differences to make all our lives easier.


I'm not wedded to the SGI APIs, we put the sample code out to generate
interest, not as a force-feeding of an API. We'd obviously like something close
to it (and draft POSIX) as possible, but that doesn't mean I'm going to take my
ball and go and play elsewhere.

If we could get one common API between Linux and BSD, I'd prefer that, instead
of insisting on rolling our own because of a case of NIH.

As an example, if we do go with different APIs we'd better work out a plan for
autoconf/imake configuration to at least provide some sort of compile plan for
third party apps.

*
* Cheers,
*
* Jeff
*

richard.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Richard Offer           Widget FAQ --> http://reality.sgi.com/widgetFAQ
MTS-Core Design (Motif)
___________________________________________http://reality.sgi.com/offer

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