news@daver.bungi.com (01/11/91)
I thought the attached article from comp.os.minix would be of interest.
A few observations:
1) I watch comp.os.minix quite closely and in general have not
seen announcements regarding most of the code indicated.
2) The list clearly indicates that 32-bit versions of Minix
beginning with release 1.5.10 can run serious code.
--------------- article attached -------------------
From: awb@ermine.ed.ac.uk (Alan W Black)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: Wanted: list of minix software
Message-ID: <1991Jan10.105803@ermine.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 10 Jan 91 10:58:03 GMT
References: <1991Jan08.203957.1176@iti.com>
Sender: news@aipna.ed.ac.uk
Reply-To: awb@ermine.ed.ac.uk (Alan W Black)
Organization: Dept of AI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Lines: 85
To: johnc
Status: RO
In article <1991Jan08.203957.1176@iti.com>, todd@iti.com (maroC ddoT) writes:
# Does anyone have a list of currently ported unix software that runs under
# minix? Stuff like GNU utililities, kermit, etc...
#
# Any info would be appreciated..
#
# Thanks,
#
# -------------------------------------------------------------------------
# - maroC ddoT (backwords for a backward world) uunet!iti!todd
# (todd@iti.com)
# "Shut up, be happy." - Ice-T
# "This time, The Revolution will not be televised..." - G. Scot-Heron
# -------------------------------------------------------------------------
I cannot speak for all versions of MINIX but will give a list of GNU
software currently ported on my own machine. All this software
is run under MINIX 386 (Bruce Evan's patches).
Gnuemacs 18.55
gcc 1.37.1 (but 1.38 does work)
gas 1.37
bash 1.05
gnu binutils (ar ld strip nm size)
fileutils (ls mv etc)
make, sed, gawk, find, grep, fgrep, bison, diff
Also we have SICStus prolog, Edinburgh Prolog, ELK (a scheme) and a bad
version of AKCL -- but I haven't got enough memory) -- oh and most
importantly rogue :-)
g++ should work without much problem, and we are currently working on gdb
(but don't hold your breath).
Not all this software is free to distribute but some is available on
the archive server at plains.nodak.edu (134.129.111.64 in pub/Minix/uk).
Updates will be posted soon.
I also know of implementations of TeX
Some of the above will work under minix PC (86 and 286 version) but only
the smaller ones, i.e. forget about gcc emacs lisps and prologs.
On the ST (and Amiga and Macintosh). GCC has been ported and is avaliable
from the atari archive atari.archive.umich.edu (141.211.164.8 in
atari/gnustuff/minix). Many other pieces have been ported too including
bash. I tried emacs and it does sort of work but as the 68k version can't
do unexec you have to load in the emacs lisp code every time which is really
slow.
There are also ports (to all ?? versions) of uucp, and news (Bnews),
microemacs, mg, (kermit is part of the Minix distribution).
And many many others.
So basically a large amount of freely available software has been ported.
I think I should add that much of the GNU stuff was installed rather than
ported. I don't consider adding -DUSG to one line of a makefile porting
(bison requires that).
To take a wider view. MINIX is a reasonable unix (especially in the
386 and 68k versions) and runs serious programs. I know that isn't what
Andy wants minix to develop into, but I suppose he shouldn't write such
good programs :-). Most of these programs require minor or no changes
to the kernel (we have added support for gnu a.out files to the kernel),
so we are not changing the basic MINIX system to run these programs.
The sort of programs which don't port are window systems and programs
requiring streams. It will probably never be the case that the X window
system will be ported to MINIX, it's just too big, but people have showed
interest in porting MGR the berkeley window manager. As for TCP/IP there
was dicussion about this about 6 months ago but I haven't heard anything
further.
Though there is some graphics and mouse support available for the
Atari ST.
So as you can see there is a lot available and it is very easy to add to.
Hope this helps
Alan
Alan W Black 80 South Bridge, Edinburgh, UK
Dept of Artificial Intelligence tel: (+44) -31 225 7774 x228 or x223
University of Edinburgh email: awb@ed.ac.uk
--
John Connin: manatee Orlando, Florida
UUCP: {uunet,ge-dab,ucf-cs}!tarpit!tous!manatee!johnc