OCD programmers and backwards compatibility :-).

[Les Mikesell]

Robin Laing wrote:
>> 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...)
>>
>
> 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.
>
I think /opt was originally conceived as a place for vendor or third 
party packages
that were not part of the base distribution. 

> 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?

Yes, but don't you think any system capable of supporting the next 
advance on one
of these fronts can easily also continue to run and be compatible with 
anything
you had before.

> At some point in time, the past has to be dumped and we have to move 
> forward.
Yes, you will probably want to replace your apps.  One at at time.  
Maybe one
a year.

> This is as good as time as any.
It is as bad a time as any, too.  The reason you want to replace old 
apps is to
correct the mistakes in them.  How sure are you that you won't just replace
them with new mistakes?

> 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).
Correctly written programs had no problem with Y2K.  Correctly written 
32 bit
programs do not have 2 gig file limits and run correctly on 64bit 
systems that
provide backwards compatibility.

> 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.
>
That's not an inherent limitation or something that happened because of 
age.  There
were filesystems capable of handling many files years ago.   But, such a 
problem
points out that you might want to be able to run your current programs (that
perhaps your business depends on and can't be replaced) on a new and
updated operating system.

> 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.
It's not a universal problem. 
http://www.sun.com/emrkt/campaign_docs/expertexchange/knowledge/solaris_security_compat.html#4
Perhaps that's too much to ask from a free OS, though.

> 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.
>
And the nice thing about them is that there are so many to choose from.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell at gmail.com