Re: FYI: `Document' qnx (Was: Various systems)

[Daniele Arena]

Akim,

If you allow me a word as a complete outsider, I personally think that
your wish to maintain documentation for every OS is extremely nice and
denotes a lot of courage, because maintaining such a thing can be hell. I
think this is Pavel's point: that this effort can fade in time, and we
would just have an obsolete documentation about old OSs.

And maybe the autoconf documentation isn't really the right place where
people would look for it; for my part, I would love for example to have a
website where there is a DB of the various OSs with their characteristics,
portability issues, etc. Does anyone know if there is such a thing? If
there is not, would there be a valorous volunteer that would set it up?:)

Just my 0.02Euro.

Cheers,

Daniele.


On 6 Dec 2000, Akim Demaille wrote:

> >>>>> "Pavel" == Pavel Roskin <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> Pavel> I'm worried about the political side of the problem. Once QNX
> Pavel> is there other people will want to put other OS'es into the
> Pavel> manual.
> 
> That's definitely my wish!
> 
> 
> Pavel> The problem is that the documentation for programs, especially
> Pavel> for commercial programs tends not to mention the existing
> Pavel> problems, at least from the point of view of an Autoconf
> Pavel> developer, i.e. I don't expect to see the description of the
> Pavel> shell bugs on the HP-UX site.
> 
> Yes, I agree.  This is not exactly the point.  What I want, is some
> form of small database on what you might be willing to know when your
> start working on portability.  For instance, I'd like to list all the
> OSes we know, and their release dates.
> 
> 
> Pavel> Notably, the problem with the error status after foo=`bar` is
> Pavel> not described in the sh documentation on the QNX site.
> 
> They might not even not know it.
> 
> 
> 
> Pavel> I mean, you cannot document everything. The world
> Pavel> changes. Restrict yourself to the relevant facts. "Hundreds
> Pavel> processors" are not relevant and sound like advertizing. And I
> Pavel> sound like RMS :-)
> 
> Yeah, I agree my text is not too good.  The thing is I'm not a user,
> and I heavily inspired myself from the QNX site itself.  I'd prefer
> that some user, such as Daniele, do it, but an impetus is needed, and
> I meant to make it.
> 
> 
> >> I very much agree the real content is and will be there.  There
> >> must be listed and classified the failures we know, and certainly
> >> not in Shellology nor Systemology.
> 
> Pavel> Ok. If you insist on having the Systemology section I'll try to
> Pavel> put more relevant content there. I'm updating my .plan
> 
> I insist on the fact that I understand your point.  I still want to do
> something like this because I think some people might be interested in
> such things.  For instance, do you know since when large file support
> is in SunOS?  There are questions like this that I'd like to see
> answered somewhere.  And then, naturally, I believe the Autoconf
> documentation is a good place for this.
> 
>