Date: Sun, 02 Jun 2002 23:27:51 -0700 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: jos@catnook.com Cc: Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon@orthanc.ab.ca>, Sergey Babkin <babkin@bellatlantic.net>, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Improving GNU make compatibility in BSD make (+ patch) Message-ID: <3CFB0C67.5689C5BC@mindspring.com> References: <3CFAAED2.F98FD7B4@bellatlantic.net> <200206030207.g5327Gm1012478@orthanc.ab.ca> <20020603021517.GA11452@lizzy.catnook.com>
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Jos Backus wrote: > On Sun, Jun 02, 2002 at 08:07:16PM -0600, Lyndon Nerenberg wrote: > > --lyndon (who doesn't understand why this is an issue, after having > > just converted a *whole* lot of source to work with > > POSIX make. Standards? Who gives a f*** (I guess ...)) > > I just checked the Open Group make definition and I can't find either $^ or > $>. So if we want to be truly standards-compliant perhaps we should remove > support for $> :-) Intentionally stepping on the option value namespace in the absence of a ratified standard is a really stupid thing to do. But POSIX is N-P incomplete for some problems. On purpose. This is because POSIX is not meant to be a useful standard, it is meant to be an exclusionary standard for competition for government contracts. It was primarily meant to keep VAX/VMS, VM/CMS, Windows, and other OS software from vendors without at least an SVR3 source license and a per unit royalty agreement with AT&T/USL from competing on contracts like "Desktop II", "Desktop III", "AFCAC 451", and so on, and to prevent inclusion of such OS's on the GSA purchasing schedule. POSIX is the minimum list of conformance requirements which the UNIX vendors involved could agree on, because their UNIX implementations already conformed. POSIX is so fuzzy in so many areas because there were conflicting implementations, and they had to write it so that all of them "complied with POSIX" by default, once the standard was ratified and made into a CLIN requirement for government contracts. Do you *really* believe that someone would design a standard with no way to do a lot of things OSs at the time could already do, *on purpose*, without some ulterior motive? That POSIX file locking semantics are the work of an engineering genius? -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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