dyer@arktouros.mit.edu (Steve Dyer) (10/19/88)
One question that just occurred to me, and wasn't asked publically
at the "NeXT Day", was whether the NeXT/Mach a.out format for executable
binaries was the same as the Sun. Was it not the case that 4.3BSD
VAX binaries ran unmodified under Mach on the VAX? Is it not the
case that Sun OS 68K binaries (at least < 4.0) run unmodified under
Mach on the Sun 3 series? (These are real questions, not just rhetoric.)
If this is so, wouldn't it make a lot of sense to support the Sun OS
a.out object format and system call interface? Granted, programs which
make heavy use of SunView or X11 or whatever won't run, but for your
unadorned programs like Fortran compilers, etc., which expect a glass
TTY interface, this would be an enormous win. Imagine allowing most
of the existing Sun binaries to be used on the NeXT machine. The
market synergy is almost too much to resist.
Any comments from the knowledgable?
---
Steve Dyer
dyer@arktouros.MIT.EDU
dyer@spdcc.COM aka {harvard,husc6,ima,bbn,m2c,mipseast}!spdcc!dyerralphw@ius3.ius.cs.cmu.edu (Ralph Hyre) (10/20/88)
In article <7558@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> dyer@arktouros.mit.edu (Steve Dyer) writes: >Was it not the case that 4.3BSD VAX binaries ran unmodified under Mach on the >VAX? Yes. the ITC (creators of Andrew (window manager), AFS (Vice filesystem) uses the vendor-supported variants of Unix as a base, which creates some interesting conflicts: (Ultrix 2.2 vs. 4.3BSD, RT Mach (4.3) vs. AIX, and SunOS vs. Sun Mach) >Is it not the case that Sun OS 68K binaries (at least < 4.0) run >unmodified under Mach on the Sun 3 series? Yes, mostly. There are some small remaining wierd hangups, dependent on the binary. SunOS features like NFS, SunView, RPC, and quotas (which aren't generally used in the CS Dept.) are not standardly available here. It is now believe that Suntools will run, although the Mach Sun in my office won't quite do it. (probably a missing file) X11 has never had a problem. Mach binaries run easier under SunOS, for example. Saves me from porting a lot of miscellaneous utilities:-). just cp /usr/cs/bin/wh /../sun/usr/cs/bin/ DISCLAIMER: I speak primarily as a Mach user and SunOS maintainer, not a Mach developer or anyone in a position to implement changes and make them stick. (This may change as our group converts to Mach.) -- - Ralph W. Hyre, Jr. Internet: ralphw@ius3.cs.cmu.edu Phone:(412) CMU-BUGS Amateur Packet Radio: N3FGW@W2XO, or c/o W3VC, CMU Radio Club, Pittsburgh, PA "You can do what you want with my computer, but leave me alone!8-)"
djones@megatest.UUCP (Dave Jones) (10/20/88)
From article <7558@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>, by dyer@arktouros.mit.edu (Steve Dyer): > One question that just occurred to me, and wasn't asked publically > at the "NeXT Day", was whether the NeXT/Mach a.out format for executable > binaries was the same as the Sun. > ... Even *Sun* binaries are not the same as Sun binaries, or so I heard today. A fellow told me that the RISC a.out format for sun-4 is incompatible with Unix (bsd) a.out format, which is what sun-3 uses. He was steamed because a linker I had written and put in the public domain would not work on his new machine. Wanted to know if I had Sun-4 version. Sigh. > Any comments from the knowledgable? Heh! We ignorant folks like to respond too, you know! -- Dave J.