Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!apollo!apollo.hp.com!smv
From: smv@apollo.HP.COM (Steve Valentine)
Subject: Re: Apollo Miscellany
Lines: 34
Message-ID: <1991Jun7.201210.4798@apollo.hp.com>
Sender: netnews@apollo.hp.com (USENET posting account)
Nntp-Posting-Host: dreaming.ch.apollo.hp.com
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Company, Chelmsford, MA
References:  <9106061857.AA10627@richter.mit.edu>
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1991 20:12:10 GMT

In article <9106061857.AA10627@richter.mit.edu>, krowitz@RICHTER.MIT.EDU (David Krowitz) writes:
>Nah, they said outright that the name change was for
>reasons of perception. They wanted to stress that any
>conflicts between SR10.3 and POSIX would be resolved
>in favor of SR10.3. (this was at the ADUS sys-admin
>SIG meeting in Orlando).

Let me nip this one in the bud.
Conflicts between SR10.3 and POSIX (and other standards) will be resolved in favor of SR10.3 only in the default compilation mode.  If you build in -ansi mode, with _POSIX_SOURCE defined, you'll get the differences resolved in favor of POSIX.1-1990.

We want to make it easy to:
a) Just recompile existing "non-standard" programs.
b) Compile standard conforming programs.

In order to implement the standards correctly, we have to break some existing behavior.
For example, to implement ANSI C correctly at sr10.3, we had to make the <stdio.h>
stop using '_iob' because that's a symbol that is reserved to the implementation.
We changed it to use '__iob' instead, but this means that programs compiled in the strict
ANSI C environment at SR10.3 won't run on older SR's, because they don't provide '__iob'.
The solution was to bend the standards in the default compilation environment (-xansi), while providing strict adherence to the standards in a controlled environment (-ansi).

Similar niggling little changes like this will be required to implement POSIX.1-1990
to the letter of the standard.  We figure that most people will care more about being
able to build programs on SR10.4 nodes that will run on SR10.3 nodes than will care about
these little corners of the standards.  However we do plan to provide a compilation
and execution environment at SR10.4 which will comply fully with POSIX.1-1990, no if's
and's but's or weasle words necessary.

Now, having said that, I do have to add the weasle words to THIS message, and say that I'm
not speaking for HP/Apollo and these are my words not theirs, etc.
-- 
Steve Valentine - smv@apollo.hp.com
Hewlett-Packard Company, Apollo Systems Division, Chelmsford, MA
Hermits have no peer pressure. -Steven Wright
