[unix-pc.general] Need advice/help on upgrading to 3.51

erict@flatline.UUCP (J. Eric Townsend) (04/14/89)

I'm sick and tired of running this evil 3.0.  (Guess who doesn't have
an nlist() call, to the best of my knowledge?)  Anyway, what I'm looking
for is:

cheapest upgrade path: who's selling 3.51 + Dev Kit + manuals for the
  lowest price

Compatibility Caveats: I'm running a DOS-73, EIA/RAM (w/1.5Mb),
  VDI_Libs, and a few other neato things.  Is the object code (and
  associated libraries) portable from 3.0 -> 3.51?
  And, I'm using the OBM (kinda have to).

3.5 vs 3.51:  Is there a reason to take one over the other?  Is
  the 'c' fixdisk really going to happen?

executables:  I have RM-Cobol (from AT&T), and am wondering if it will
  work ok under 3.5+.  Same goes for Smart System, Franz Lisp and any
  other executables you can think of.

Um, email, I'll summarize, and it can be added to the "List of Commonly
Asked Unix-Pc Questions".  (Which we haven't seen in a while... :-)

thx
-- 
 "Enter, oh seeker of knowledge... That's *YOU*, fathead!"
J. Eric Townsend
Inet: cosc5fa@george.uh.edu  511 Parker #2 Houston,Tx,77007
EastEnders Mailing List: eastender@flatline.UUCP

rjg@sialis.mn.org (Robert J. Granvin) (04/15/89)

So I posted instead... :-)

>Compatibility Caveats: I'm running a DOS-73, EIA/RAM (w/1.5Mb),
>  VDI_Libs, and a few other neato things.  Is the object code (and
>  associated libraries) portable from 3.0 -> 3.51?

To the best of my knowledge.  Does anyone claim differently?

>  And, I'm using the OBM (kinda have to).

I'm sorry.  :-)

>3.5 vs 3.51:  Is there a reason to take one over the other?  Is
>  the 'c' fixdisk really going to happen?

It's been eons since I ran 3.5, but I recall general giddyness when
upgrading to 3.51 (which I was supposed to get anyways).  Our
system(s) at work had 3.0, but we never installed them (can't tell you
why).  The 3.5/3.51 manuals appear to be much better than the 3.0
manuals.

The 'c' fixdisk is really Fixdisk 2.0.  Yes, it is forthcoming, no
it's not ready yet (And I understand why... :-)

>executables:  I have RM-Cobol (from AT&T), and am wondering if it will
>  work ok under 3.5+.  Same goes for Smart System, Franz Lisp and any
>  other executables you can think of.

I've seen all these things run under 3.51.  I can't imagine that
anything compiled under 3.0 would be binary-incompatible with 3.51.
You may get a better binary or better performance by recompiling, but
everything should still work.  (Does this hold true if it's using
shared libraries?)

-- 
       Robert J. Granvin           
   National Computer Systems     "Looks like the poor devil died in his sleep."
       rjg@sialis.mn.org         "What a terrible way to die."
{amdahl,hpda}!bungia!sialis!rjg

wjc@ho5cad.ATT.COM (Bill Carpenter) (04/15/89)

In article <1369@sialis.mn.org> rjg@sialis.mn.org (Robert J. Granvin) writes:
> >Compatibility Caveats: I'm running a DOS-73, EIA/RAM (w/1.5Mb),
> >  VDI_Libs, and a few other neato things.  Is the object code (and
> >  associated libraries) portable from 3.0 -> 3.51?
> 
> To the best of my knowledge.  Does anyone claim differently?

You shouldn't have any trouble with object code compatibility
(including using shared libraries), but between 3.0 and 3.5 they
changed from the "old" archive library format to the "new" format.
What that meant was that if you had libsomething.a from 3.0 or before,
you had to unpack it into individual files (using the old "ar") and
then re-archive it into the new format (using the 3.5 ar).

For 3.5, they shipped utilities (I think called "3.0ar" and "3.0nm")
for just this purpose, but I think they didn't do that for 3.51. (So
if you're going from 3.0->3.51, save your own copies of "ar" and
"nm".)  Of course all the libraries they ship you are already
converted, except there was some slip up for "libcvdi.a" (the graphics
library), so you have to convert that yourself if you want to use it.
(It only takes a couple minutes.)

[Note ... I am not connected with UNIXpc development or maintenance.]
--
--
   Bill Carpenter         att!ho5cad!wjc  or  attmail!bill

thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) (04/18/89)

Bill Carpenter mentions that libcvdi.a was shipped with 3.5[1] in the "old"
format.  True.  It also appears that libg.a was shipped in old format since
I just ran 3.51's ar on every *.a in /lib and /usr/lib and those were the
only two about which it (ar) complained.

If someone wants to suggest that the person responsible should eat bark and
s**t at the full moon (this Thursday), I'll second the motion!  :-)

Thad Floryan [thad@cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad]