I would like to add my voice in support of conservatism with regard
to "improvements" that would break applications. The reason for OS standards
is to benefit applications, and in particular the portability, re-usability,
and maintainability of applications.
The success of Unix/Posix and Unix-like OS's including Linux, BSD,
etc. has been due to their ubituity, API stability, and
interchangeability with respect to well behaved applications.
Ted
On Wed, Jun 25, 2008 at 08:49:36PM -0700, Roger Marquis wrote:
> On Wed, 25 Jun 2008, David Korn wrote:
> >Whether the change is in the shell or in printf, implementations
> >must change.
>
> No disputing that :-) but it's the type of change that should concern POSIX
> members because A) this would introduce an incompatibility which, B) would
> result in application failures.
>
> There is great benefit to compatibility, not just across Unix/Linux
> versions but also across time. The benefit is largest when these OSs are
> compared to other OS. When fundamental tools such as bin/sh break it
> reflects poorly on all Unix/Linux versions and applications.
>
> Stepping back a level, and IMO, this really should be a policy decision
> rather than a bin/sh decision. A POSIX policy or guidelines on acceptable
> types of change and their consequences would be more useful both now and in
> the future, to developers and end-users. Such policies would also be more
> efficient than piecemeal decisions regarding new features which may or may
> not see much actual use, and regardless of recently introduced "existing
> practice".
>
> Roger Marquis
>
>
> --
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