I wonder if any vendors, or independent groups, would be interested in
maintaining a POSIX compliancy patchkit for the Linux kernel?
IMO such a "POSIX Linux" project would be useful for several reasons.
Overall, I think there is pressure from several directions to get all
sorts of POSIX APIs into the kernel. On occasion, kernel hackers are
confronted with a situation where complete POSIX compliancy may mean a
compromise in some area, be it performance, security, API issues, code
cleanliness issues, etc. Or simply that the POSIX-related code just
isn't ready to be merged into the mainline kernel yet.
The vendors also benefit by this, because the barrier to entry in
POSIX-related cases would be lowered, which would in turn satisfy the
demands of customers. Which would in turn give the mainline kernel all
the software engineering benefits that come from a more reasoned and
gradual review and merge of new features.
Does something like this already exist? This would need to be an open,
vendor-neutral project...
Jeff
On Nov 04, 2002 18:14 -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> I wonder if any vendors, or independent groups, would be interested in
> maintaining a POSIX compliancy patchkit for the Linux kernel?
>
> IMO such a "POSIX Linux" project would be useful for several reasons.
> Overall, I think there is pressure from several directions to get all
> sorts of POSIX APIs into the kernel. On occasion, kernel hackers are
> confronted with a situation where complete POSIX compliancy may mean a
> compromise in some area, be it performance, security, API issues, code
> cleanliness issues, etc. Or simply that the POSIX-related code just
> isn't ready to be merged into the mainline kernel yet.
>
> The vendors also benefit by this, because the barrier to entry in
> POSIX-related cases would be lowered, which would in turn satisfy the
> demands of customers. Which would in turn give the mainline kernel all
> the software engineering benefits that come from a more reasoned and
> gradual review and merge of new features.
>
> Does something like this already exist? This would need to be an open,
> vendor-neutral project...
What about the existing POSIX test suite from X/Open? I don't know what
the current license is, but it is certainly freely downloadable from
their website. However, it is a pain in the a** to set up and run, so
a new version would definitely be welcome.
I would give you a URL, but I don't have access to my mail archives now.
Cheers, Andreas
--
Andreas Dilger \ "If a man ate a pound of pasta and a pound of antipasto,
\ would they cancel out, leaving him still hungry?"
http://www-mddsp.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/adilger/ -- Dogbert
On Mon, 4 Nov 2002, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> I wonder if any vendors, or independent groups, would be interested in
> maintaining a POSIX compliancy patchkit for the Linux kernel?
I'd be interested in helping. There must be some POSIXisms
that are not in the kernel yet but still useful enough to keep
alive.
regards,
Rik
--
Bravely reimplemented by the knights who say "NIH".
http://www.surriel.com/ http://distro.conectiva.com/
Current spamtrap: <a href=mailto:"[email protected]">[email protected]</a>
On Mon, Nov 04, 2002 at 04:31:13PM -0700, Andreas Dilger wrote:
...
> What about the existing POSIX test suite from X/Open? I don't know what
> the current license is, but it is certainly freely downloadable from
> their website. However, it is a pain in the a** to set up and run, so
> a new version would definitely be welcome.
>
> I would give you a URL, but I don't have access to my mail archives now.
Howzabout the NIST one ?
http://www.itl.nist.gov/div897/ctg/posix_form.htm
Jim Freeman wrote:
> Howzabout the NIST one ?
>
> http://www.itl.nist.gov/div897/ctg/posix_form.htm
I think this is based on the 1990 POSIX spec. The things the new suite is
starting with have been added since then, up to and including the 2001 spec.
It is public domain I believe, so I would like to merge that in at some point,
but I would want to review the test cases individually to make sure they still
apply to the latest spec, etc. A lot of the work is just checking things in the
latest specification and adding/updating references in the code.
-- Geoff Gustafson
These are my views and not necessarily those of my employer.
> I wonder if any vendors, or independent groups, would be interested in
> maintaining a POSIX compliancy patchkit for the Linux kernel?
I agree this sounds very useful. I could do something like this as part of the
test suite project; this would expand the scope to include testing and reporting
the status of the latest patches.
-- Geoff Gustafson
These are my views and not necessarily those of my employer.
Andreas Dilger wrote:
> What about the existing POSIX test suite from X/Open? I don't know what
> the current license is, but it is certainly freely downloadable from
> their website. However, it is a pain in the a** to set up and run, so
> a new version would definitely be welcome.
If I understand correctly, the test suites that cover POSIX extensions more
recent than 1990 are not free. Also, these use the TET framework, whereas this
project hopes to keep tests very simple and standalone, so the code can be
immediately sent to and warmly received by developers if bugs are found.
http://www.opengroup.org/testing/sales+support/prices.htm#VSTRC
-- Geoff Gustafson
These are my views and not necessarily those of my employer.