On Fri, Oct 19, 2001 at 03:28:37PM -0400, Greg A. Woods wrote:

 > In the Sun world a major upgrade is one like SunOS-4.x to SunOS-5.[0-8],
 > or SunOS-5.[0-8] to SunOS-5.9 (or maybe even some jumps in between,
 > depending on exactly what purpose your machine has).  From what I know
 > Sun are hoping to have several binary translation tools to help assist
 > their users make the migration from Solaris-[78] to Solaris-9.

SunOS 4 -> 5 was effectively changing to an entirely different
operating system.

SunOS 5.8 -> 5.9, as I understand it, will be going from ILP32 -> LP64
userland.

These are both pretty big deals.

How is this like changing from NetBSD 1.x -> NetBSD 2.x, considering
that:

	(a) The operating system will still be the same -- the most
	    that will really be changing is the *kernel*.

	(b) The binary formats are staying the same.  (Hell, even the
	    "1.4 a.out" -> "1.5 ELF" transition went pretty smoothly,
	    and that was a minor relase!).

 > In the NetBSD world a major upgrade is certainly the one from a.out to
 > ELF.  If you did that without rebuilding a lot (or all) your add-on
 > software then you were lucky, and guess what -- /emul saved your day.

So, some of us considered ditching the __RENAME'd symbols during that
bump.  But the problem is that not everyone could switch at the same
time, therefore it was deemed inappropriate.

"That ship has sailed, buddy!"

-- 
        -- Jason R. Thorpe <thorpej@wasabisystems.com>