I guess it depends what you mean by support.
The argument in the past (Martin) was that "proper" support is very
expensive and so we can only do it with lots of effort and several machines
per OS.
We _have_ to be much more flexible now. Is this at all realistic?
My guess is that this will be sustainable only on the assumption that there
are no horrible system dependencies in the software - which given that it is
pretty solid on 2 OSes currently is probably a reasonable assumption.
Given that, then it would lead one to say that we support the software and
that we expect run-time bugs will be generic ones i.e. will probably happen
under several/all OSes. Build-time problems will, after configure is sorted
out, be expected to be few and far between.
All the above is applicable to Starlink classic. For the most part the Java
code should be reasonably secure - as long as an appropriate JDK/JRE is
available.
There are several oversimplifications here, but unless the above is broadly
true then we are in trouble.
Can anyone see any show stoppers?
...David
-----Original Message-----
From: Peter W. Draper [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 03 November 2003 13:10
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: The future of RedHat
On Mon, 3 Nov 2003, David Berry wrote:
> > The real question is what could we do if the sites fragment in their use
of
> > OSes. Saying that we could not support sites is probably not an option.
ON
> > the other hand if we see difficulties with excessive fragmentation then
we
> > should point them out to sites.
>
> OK, so we wait until a need has been demonstrated for a new OS before
> jumping into supporting it? And we carry on pressing the benefits of
> sites having a common operating system (the managers seemed to realise
> that this was a v. good idea at Preston).
All good sense of course and we should have a recommended flavour of Linux
(which will probably be Fedora for a while) and be part of what is
promoted in the UK, but there are more considerations that just what UK
astronomy sites should use. IRAF supports the following PC versions:
System Distribution Add'l Systems
------ ------------ -------------
FreeBSD 4.2 and higher FBSD
MacOSX 10.1 and higher MACX
RedHat Linux V6.x thru V8.x RHUX Mandrake 7.x and 8.x
Slackware V8.x LNUX Debian 2.x, all others
Solaris 7 for Intel SSOL
SuSE Linux V6.x thru V7.x SUSE
that's the long term competition. People don't want to change OS just to
use our software.
Of course this brings us back to the "./configure;make - empowering users
to build our software themselves", thread, since I doubt IRAF test for all
these platforms either.
One other point. Steve has built the USSC for Debian, with little effort
it seems, that looks good for porting around Linux flavours.
Peter.
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