Mail Archives: djgpp/2009/06/04/01:01:13
Hi,
On May 30, 7:44=A0pm, Rugxulo <rugx DOT DOT DOT AT gmail DOT com> wrote:
>
> ... it's GNU sed 4.x specific, so it's not ideal for
> (unless you assume it's present, ahem, yet NetBSD [and others??]
> still uses a wimpy other one lacking "\<" among other things).
Well, I messed around with a few VMs, so I can now say I was wrong ...
mostly. ;-)
Seems that FreeBSD (well, FreeSBIE 2.0.1 at least), NetBSD 4.0.1, and
OpenBSD 4.5 all have different seds: basically from the same base but
different options. FreeBSD supports -i and -E (EREs) among others,
NetBSD supports -E etc., but OpenBSD supports neither. I now think I
remember that "\<" (beginning of word) is an ERE, so maybe POSIX
doesn't require it to be supported by default?? But it's so darn
common, e.g. ex supports it.
Anyways, I don't think any of the *BSDs will include GNU sed any time
soon (except via ports) due to licensing. Heck, they all prefer pmake
instead of GNU despite many projects requiring the latter. I even find
it weird that they all rely so heavily on GCC but dislike it for
various reasons too (bugs, semi-unmaintained ports, bitrot, slow
speed). I've heard that PCC can compile OpenBSD's kernel and Clang/
LLVM can compile FreeBSD's (and even compiles GCC 4.2 itself), so who
knows, they might switch to those. Apparently they all really dislike
GPLv3, and I honestly have no idea why. (Did it really change that
much? I didn't think so. And the FSF is actively converting everything
GNU to GPLv3 these days.)
In other words, sometimes licenses (even for "free software") get in
the way. Or maybe it's just personality clashes, who knows. I don't
claim to understand it. I guess when there's NDAs, money, binary
blobs, and microcode updates involved, people get twitchy.
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