[advocacy-discuss] "What is OpenSolaris" page

[Keith Bierman]

On May 8, 2008, at 9:00 AM, John Plocher wrote:

> Joerg Schilling wrote:
>> They tend to use the default PATH and then
>> will e.g. get a chmod that does not support ACLs and a "tar" that  
>> does not
>> create tar archives.
>
> Lets not overreact - a sense of proportion is good.

Fair point.
>
> As an Unix "Oldby" (going on 28 years...), I can blithfully

Thanks, that's my new word for the day ;>


> say that
> I have never used ACLs for anything and

Sadly, if one has to scrounge around to figure out how to access  
them, they are much less likely to be used.

>
> The likelihood of a newby falling into this type of "unique to
> OpenSolaris" problem seems remote at best, especially considering
> that THEY ALREADY ARE DOING THINGS THAT WAY ON THEIR MACS AND LINUX
> BOXES!

Indeed; but for features like ACLs it is a shame that they are  
effectively hidden. But rather than rewhack all of the "classic"  
tools to try to modernize them, I'd suggest a more modest effort to  
add Solaris special features to versions of the GNU tools. If we  
can't "sell" the changes upstream, pay the fork price and put the  
Solaris improved versions in /usr/gnu (I'd advocate making them work  
well for Linux as well, perhaps our versions would get picked up by  
Ubuntu and friends ;>).

As for the tar arguments ... nearly every tar variation I've ever  
used has done pretty much what I needed; so I'm agnostic about trying  
to puzzle out which tar is the "best" for the default. And when I'm  
in doubt about "best" being the "same as everyone else" has a lot to  
be said for a default.


-- 
Keith H. Bierman   khbkhb at gmail.com      | AIM kbiermank
5430 Nassau Circle East                  |
Cherry Hills Village, CO 80113           | 303-997-2749
<speaking for myself*> Copyright 2008