Date: Mon, 09 Nov 1998 10:10:58 -0800 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: "David E. Cross" <crossd@cs.rpi.edu> Cc: Steve Kargl <sgk@troutmask.apl.washington.edu>, nate@mt.sri.com, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: linux software installation and uname Message-ID: <9442.910635058@time.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 09 Nov 1998 13:58:48 EST." <Pine.SGI.4.05.9811091355590.5731-100000@o2.cs.rpi.edu>
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> They should not do that; they are making the assumption that they know > better than you how your machine ought to be setup. Um, no offense but I don't think that's relevant here. The essence of emulation is to make the assumptions which work on one platform work on another, nothing more, nothing less - technical correctness doesn't even enter into it. :-) I think the correct thing to do here is simply give uname(1) some truly switchable behavior, as Steve's second patch did. Sure it's a gross hack, but we have to stay focused on the fact that in the real world, people grab and abuse the output of uname(1) to request platform specific information when they should be asking for *feature* specific information and that's just life. For the addition of 4 stinking lines of code, we can gain the ability to *optionally* deal with it and I say that's a reasonable trade-off. - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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