bds@lzaz.ATT.COM (Buce Szablak) (10/11/89)
In article <3539@ast.cs.vu.nl>, ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum) writes: > 3. If you promise to write a lint for MINIX, I promise to use it. > Andy Tanenbaum (ast@cs.vu.nl) *sigh* If you used function prototypes and a compiler that supported them you would not need lint. Does anyone seriously doubt that ANSI C will not be the C dialect of choice in the the 1991 time frame (my guess on MINIX 2.0 availability)? Compilers for DOS machines supporting the *proposed* standard have been available for over a year! I think Andy believes this too since he posted that an attempt to constructing an ANSI compiler failed since it wouldn't fit into 64 K. Now at the time, I was tempted to post a note suggesting once again that PC MINIX should adopt the ST MINIX fork/exec approach (perhaps based on the binaries magic number) so that large model programs could be supported. However, that has been shot down before; so I won't mention it. It has occurred to me, that a compromise might be to support the Medium model - 64K data, >64K text. Thus, you could keep the same fork/exec semantics, but maybe you could support an ANSI C compiler. I suspect that the ACK compiler will choke on function pointers and data pointers being of differing size, so I would recommend making all pointers 32 bits. Thus, you will even be set up for 386 implementations that have 32 bit segments (I also expect 386 processors to be more prevalent in 1991). We have a currently diverging community: ST MINIX, PC MINIX, and someday 386 MINIX. The ST (probably Amiga and maybe Mac by 1991) and 386 MINIX groups will have the large address space but will be hampered by an environment restricted by the fundamental 64K PC limitation. An example of this was the GNU C port that supports ANSI C for the ST: the MINIX kernel cannot be compiled by that compiler without modifications, and those changes result in a kernel that cannot be compiled by the ACK compiler (at last report). Yet the utility of an ANSI C compiler cannot be denied! Well, I've taken another swipe at that old horse. I'll let someone else take the next shot!