John,
If you have fixes or system-dependencies that you haven't sent
to bug-mh(_at_)ics(_dot_)uci(_dot_)edu, please send them in now. If you've
already sent something, please don't re-send it (my +inbox is
overflowing).
What updates do you currently have concerning a Linux-port of MH?
Two important issues related to Linux are important here:
- The patches for being able to use the GNU stdio implementation
(MH heavily depends on stdio-internals, not nice, but it saves
a lot of time, I think).
The GNU stdio implementation has been changed a while (long?)
ago, so it's important to include only patches for the current
GNU stdio implementation (don't try to stay compatible with the
old version, this will mess up the MH code too much).
- Shared libraries (using a shared libmh.so). There are one or
more patches to generate an a.out shared library on Linux and
hopefully (I'm not sure about this) there are also patches
to generate an ELF shared library.
I think only the latter should be included in an official MH
release, because a.out on Linux is phased out rapidly and all
the major distributions now support ELF. Again, supporting two
shared library techniques will mess up the MH tree unnecessary.
If these ELF-related patches are not there, they should be made
a.s.a.p. :-) In any case, don't include the legacy a.out stuff.
Besides that the MH users are most likely not among the group of
people that keep running a very old Linux-system and don't know
how to upgrade :-).
I'm willing to do some tests on Linux, when a preliminary version of
the new release would be available.
Any comments from others concerning porting to Linux?
--
-- Jos Vos <jos(_at_)xos(_dot_)nl>
-- X/OS Experts in Open Systems BV | Phone: +31 20 6938364
-- Amsterdam, The Netherlands | Fax: +31 20 6948204