Re: hackers-digest V1 #843

The Hermit Hacker wrote:
>
> On Fri, 5 Jun 1998, Matthew N. Dodd wrote:
>
> > On Fri, 5 Jun 1998, David Gould wrote:
> > > This of course is most useful if the remaining platforms adopt it too.
> > > Given current trends, I suspect this will happen.
> >
> > I suspect you're talking about 'remaining Linux distributions, on all
> > platforms (Alpha,MIPS,Sparc,ix86 etc.)
>
>         I'm suspecting the same thing...I follow the developers mailin
> list for FreeBSD, and have yet to hear of *any* work towards adopting the
> glibc "standard"...if someone wishes to point me at work being done for
> anything *other* then Linux (ie. NetBSD? Solaris x86) towards adopting
> this, I'd be interested...

I think the main website for the effort is:

http://www.telly.org/86open/

This is some of what it sez:

----8<---------8<---------8<---------8<---------8<---------8<-----

At a meeting held mid-August at the head office of SCO, participants
achieved consensus on a way to create software applications which
would run, without modification or emulation, on the Intel-based
versions of:

     BSDI
     FreeBSD
     Linux
     NetBSD
     SCO OpenServer
     Sunsoft Solaris X86
     SCO UnixWare

The goal of this effort is to encourage software developers to port
to the Unix-Intel platform by reducing the effort needed to support the
diverse mix of operating systems of this kind currently available.

The specification, called "86open", will be published and freely
available to any environment wishing compliance. It involves the
use of a standardized libc shared library of basic functions to
be provided on all systems. This library will provide a consistent
interface to programmers, hiding the differences between the various
operating systems and allowing the resulting binary programs to run
unaltered on any compliant system. Whenever possible, it will be
consistent with The Open Group's Single Unix Specification.

Each participating operating system will be free to implement the
86open library specification on its own. However, the reference
implementation will be based upon GNU's glibc version 2, ensuring
that it will remain open and freely available. The actual list and
behavior of the 86open functions is presently being determined.

----8<---------8<---------8<---------8<---------8<---------8<-----

Hannu