Subject: Re: CVS commit: syssrc/sys/compat/irix
To: Bill Studenmund <wrstuden@netbsd.org>
From: Frank van der Linden <fvdl@wasabisystems.com>
List: source-changes
Date: 10/07/2002 00:05:25
On Sun, Oct 06, 2002 at 03:04:55PM -0700, Bill Studenmund wrote:
> Note that we've traditionally had emulation uname -s report that we're
> running NetBSD, not the emulated OS. There are lots of advantages to each
> side. Making them report the emulated OS makes installs simpler, but
> making them report NetBSD helps things like web browsing; the uname OS
> gets sent to the other side, so our BSDI or Linux netscapes would credit
> BSDi or Linux, not us.

Reporting the emulated OS is the right thing to do, the application
should not 'know' that it's running on NetBSD in any way. With the
Linux emulation code, quite a few install scripts used uname. But,
more importantly, glibc used uname(2) for checks on what kind
of calls to use for e.g. threading.

Technical reasons beat advocacy reasons :-)

- Frank

-- 
Frank van der Linden                                    fvdl@wasabisystems.com
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