POSIX layer for Macs

[Manoj Kasichainula <ma...@io.com>]

Might this be useful for a future Mac port?

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Nikolaus_Schaller/mac06.html

-- 
Manoj Kasichainula - manojk at io dot com - http://www.io.com/~manojk/
"And the moral of today's story is: Lather, Rinse, Repeat." - Yakko Warner

Re: POSIX layer for Macs

[Alexei Kosut <ak...@leland.Stanford.EDU>]

On Tue, 19 May 1998, Manoj Kasichainula wrote:

> Might this be useful for a future Mac port?
> 
> http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Nikolaus_Schaller/mac06.html

Interesting... but I'm not sure about its usability. It seems to resemble
somewhat MachTen - i.e., a POSIX-like OS that runs on top of the MacOS and
makes use of its facilities, but from poking around with it, it seems
rather slow and I'm not convinced of its reliability of functionality. It
certainly does not solve the process problem. (to be honest, I have no
idea how to get Unix-style CGI scripts running on the MacOS directly -
I'm going to venture to say it's just not possible).

The licensing is also rather restrictive. It's available in binary form
only, not source, and the package must be redistributed whole (this seems
to apply even to applications built with its development facilities). And
the author seems to have indicated that he wants to move the package to
shareware in a future release.

All in all, I don't know about the viability of using this for Apache. I
suspect we'd be better off working from the NSPR/Mac package, even with
its problems. Or reccomending that people buy WebTen.

P.S. We could also tell people to run Linux on their Mac
(http://www.linuxppc.org/). That would probably work out best :)

P.P.S. Or just wait two years for MacOS X (Ten), which should retain the
BSD/POSIX compatibility layer of OpenStep/Rhapsody, and will hopefully run
Apache.

-- Alexei Kosut <ak...@stanford.edu> <http://www.stanford.edu/~akosut/>
   Stanford University, Class of 2001 * Apache <http://www.apache.org> *