Autzoo.1268 net.unix-wizards utzoo!henry Sun Jan 10 00:40:31 1982 Unix 3.0 vs V7 There is a nontrivial amount of evidence that Unix 3.0 (I've never seen anything from Bell that calls it "III", although I may not be up to date) is not in fact a direct derivative of V7, but split off from the "Mother Unix"'s line of development somewhat earlier. I have no access to 3.0 sources, but I have seen and studied a copy of the manual (warning: there is no guarantee that the manual I saw exactly matches the system that will be released). There are a number of decidedly peculiar things, like: - There are no multiplexed files. At all. - Ditto no packet driver. - There are occasional archaic things that are gone from V7. - The function of V7 dup2() is accomplished in a completely different and much more cumbersome way. - There is internal evidence that ioctl arrived late (there is a separate system call to set things like the close-on- exec bits on file descriptors). A plausible hypothesis is that 3.0 is the descendant of a system that split off from the "main line" of development shortly after the 32-bit filesystem cutover but before a number of other changes that preceded the V7 release. What to do about it? Well, one can go with Berkeley. I don't plan to do that partly because I'm running 11s and not Vaxen, and partly because I'm not very happy about some of the things Berkeley has done to Unix. My own plan is to stick with V7 as the base system and to add in various useful things from 3.0 as the need and/or inclination arises, while avoiding some of the more awful things. (I haven't made up my mind about the horrid- but-versatile tty interface yet.) ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.