Subj : life ?
To   : Maurice Kinal
From : Gerrit Kuehn
Date : Sat Feb 01 2020 17:44:24

Hello Maurice!

01 Feb 20 15:29, Maurice Kinal wrote to Gerrit Kuehn:

 GK>> The stuff is OSS, but I don't compile it myself, I just let the
 GK>> vendor or the community do the legwork.

 MK> Does that include "Msged/BSD 6.1.2" and/or "hpt/fbsd 1.9.0-cur 
 MK> 08-05-14"?

No, of course not. That's FTN software, not smarthome.

 MK> I've run across many such things over the years.  Nothing much lately 
 MK> but then again I don't usually follow embedded development for the 
 MK> mostpart.

My personal impression as of lately is that pretty much everything I have to 
deal with is moving towards python... not that I would prefer that over java or 
anything else, but that's what it looks like to me.

 GK>> in some places gcc really sucked

 MK> Example(s)?  The only one I can claim any experience with would be 
 MK> any 16-bit DOS enviroment running on 32-bit processors.  
 MK> :::shudder:::  What a bad joke that whole concept turned out to be.

Compatibility issues all over the place (mainly in versions 2.x and 3.x afaicr) 
due to ABI changes. I remember so many situations where I had to recompile each 
and every library a project was using (i.e., pretty much the whole OS) before I 
could use a newer compiler I needed for an updated software (due to changes in 
the C standard and/or the way gcc was treating it).
In comparison, java tends to keep compatibility with older code much better.

 MK> Agreed.  In my case the lack of appliances that "just work" are the 
 MK> usual source of grief which means having working gcc/glibc enviroment 
 MK> to take care of things that actually matter is the prime motivation 
 MK> for all the systems under my care.  Mind you I have yet to send 
 MK> anything out to explore the universe on it's own so perhaps I am 
 MK> looking at "appliances" the wrong way?

Don't know. Most systems I take care of are used by other people, and these 
usually follow a "if it ain't broken, don't try to fix it" strategy.


Regards,
Gerrit

....  5:44PM  up 13 days,  8:41, 6 users, load averages: 1.71, 0.74, 0.51

--- Msged/BSD 6.1.2
 * Origin: Is serving every man (2:240/12)

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