Re: OCD programmers and backwards compatibility :-).

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Les Mikesell wrote:
Alan wrote:

Perhaps you should read up on the FHS work a bit more before commenting.
It draws upon the basic work done in SunOS in particular for making NFS
work well, and traditional Unix layout, as well as 4BSD, SVID and other
related material. It's also followed pretty closely by a lot more than
Linux, and the lack of a "Linux" in the title of the standard is
intentional.


I've heard of the project before, but can't put my finger on anything that the
current version provides that couldn't have been done with backwards
compatibility as Solaris has done.   Instead we've had a decade of slow
and painful changes to new and more or less arbitrary locations.  (/opt is
in one year, /srv the next...)

---    Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx


This is an interesting issue as my upgrade to FC6 pointed out an issue with standards. Where I work, we use some NFS mounts and part of that is what is mounted in /opt. The powers in charge have decided that /opt is now a network mount. Oops, I had installed my local programs into /opt as I have done and been told to for ages and even the FHS isn't clear.

As for backward compatibility. Do we want to be backward capable for 8 bit, 16 bit or 32 bit? What about Internationalization? How about Terabyte harddrives and multi-gig files, do we not support these?

At some point in time, the past has to be dumped and we have to move forward. This is as good as time as any. 64 bit processors are almost the norm today. It is time to look at the changes necessary to support this but also take the time and make the effort to look at the future and plan for 128 bit processors. Lets not forget the headaches of Y2K and all those people and applications that are still stuck in the 32 bit world. (Flash).

In this day and age, I can have 6000 or 7000 files in a directory but I cannot copy or work on these files due to limits within the kernel from days gone bye.

I am not a developer but I keep reading about the headaches that trying to maintain backwards compatibility and meeting the needs for the future. As I see it, with Fedora, there is not backwards compatibility from last year as FC4 is now toast.

If there is a standard that most of the Linux versions or the key versions follow, then the developers don't have to customize their application for each distribution. This isn't an easy undertaking but is necessary.

Why do we have standards, to make things work together.  It is that simple.

--
Robin Laing

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