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Re: RSI Red Hat Linux Info [message #37262 is a reply to message #37188]

Wed, 03 December 2003 13:58

JD Smith
Messages: 850
Registered: December 1999

Senior Member

On Tue, 02 Dec 2003 11:43:58 -0700, RSI Information wrote:

> Red Hat's recent announcement that they are discontinuing their free
> Linux distributions has prompted questions and speculation over the
> impact this will have on IDL, and which Linux distributions RSI will
> support in the future. We hope you will find the following FAQ
> (Frequently Asked Questions) helpful:
>
> http://www.rsinc.com/services/techtip.asp?ttid=3618
>
> Knowing where you are headed with Linux will help us to be ready and
> waiting when you get there. Please share your plans with us regarding
> future Linux use by filling out our online survey:
>
> http://www.rsinc.com/survey/index.asp?wid=763369&sid=73

This FAQ lists the points of exposure for IDL to the underlyling
OS, which included the C library, the compiler, the kernel
version, and presumably all the tools used in the rsi/idl/bin/ shell
scripts.

In decreasing order of importance, these are:

1. C library: This is a big dependency for most packages, so care is
usually taken to prevent egregious breakage. Witness IDL6.0
binary compatibility with RH 7.1,7.2,...,8.0,9.0.

2. gcc: Aside from compiling IDL, the compiler is used only for
MAKE_DLL, which is not guaranteed to work without further setup
anyway. Not a big point of exposure.

3. kernel: Shared memory and vagaries of memory management might be
indicated, but these features already vary from system to system far
more than they do from kernel version to kernel version, and the
documentation warns about these variances already.

4. /bin/sh and other tools: These have been stable for a long time,
and, with care, shell scripts which have next to no system dependence
can be written. It's quite likely the scripts are already completely
system-independent, since they've had to work with so many flavors of
Unix over the years.

Since it's relatively easy to check what version of these 4 categories
are present (with #4 being hardest to check, but really a non-issue),
I still think RSI could, without actually installing and testing every
Linux distribution, compose a list indicating which
distributions/versions satisfy these basic conditions -- i.e. a
"should work, but tell us if it doesn't" category.

JD

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[Message index]

		RSI Red Hat Linux Info By: Research Systems Inc. on Tue, 02 December 2003 10:43
		Re: RSI Red Hat Linux Info By: Nigel Wade on Mon, 08 December 2003 02:55
		Re: RSI Red Hat Linux Info By: Research Systems Inc. on Mon, 08 December 2003 13:38
		Re: RSI Red Hat Linux Info By: R.Bauer on Fri, 05 December 2003 00:51
		Re: RSI Red Hat Linux Info By: Andry William Ratsima[1] on Tue, 09 December 2003 14:15
		Re: RSI Red Hat Linux Info By: JD Smith on Wed, 03 December 2003 13:58
		Re: RSI Red Hat Linux Info By: marcuirl on Tue, 09 December 2003 10:53
		Re: RSI Red Hat Linux Info By: Pertti Rautiainen on Tue, 09 December 2003 07:10
		Re: RSI Red Hat Linux Info By: Ben Panter on Tue, 09 December 2003 05:58

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