Mail Archives: opendos/1997/09/11/04:18:32
While I agree with much of what has been said about the release of the
sources, there is one thing that appears to have been overlooked:
Are you sure that you really want the utility sources anyway?
The sources are terribly messy, and very hard to understand.
Much of them is not commented, except for what the original authors
felt was important (Three of the key authors are not at Caldera).
The sources do not use the standard C_libs, instead they use a
portable library known as appslib, which contains all the c-lib functions, but
written in a mishmash of pre-ansi C, RASM86 files, and some freaky
script language that controls the Dual Lanaguage support.
There are some very strange tricks in the code (eg, a 30+ line
multiply routine, to run faster on 8086s).
They are all tied into the legendary VersionControlSystem.
Gene will be an old man by the time all these have been made into a
format useful to anyone else.
An in-joke at Caldera is "When are you going to re-write it then?"
which is the usual comment made when someone begins editing a utility.
So there might be some anguish if the sources _were_ suddenly
released..
[Just my 2p]
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