From: huott AT pinebush DOT com (Ed Huott)
Subject: David Korn: "Porting UNIX to Windows NT"
14 Jan 1997 23:53:15 -0800
Approved: cygnus DOT gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com
Distribution: cygnus
Message-ID: <199701150653.BAA16901.cygnus.gnu-win32@sol.pinebush.com>
Original-To: gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com, alicia DOT storm AT mapinfo DOT com, gam AT mapinfo DOT com,
        krone AT mapinfo DOT com, po'leary AT mapinfo DOT com, poz AT mapinfo DOT com,
        radin AT mapinfo DOT com, shawn DOT bilodeau AT mapinfo DOT com
Original-Sender: owner-gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com

David G. Korn of AT&T Labs (author of the Korn shell (ksh)) presented
a paper entitled "Porting UNIX to NT" at last week's Usenix conference
in California.  In it he describes his group's efforts "to build a
UNIX interface layer on top of the Windows NT and Windows 95 operating
systems."  The paper does an excellent job of distilling out and
describing the key issues and problems of this task.  It also
describes, in some technical detail, their approaches and solutions.

A PostScript copy of the paper is available at:

  http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/uwin/winnt.ps

I would strongly recommend it for reading to anyone with an interest
in implementations of UNIX environments/utilities on NT.  I also think
it might hold some particularly good insights for anyone involved in
development on the gnu-win32 project.

The parent page to the URL given above gives an overview to the
package, called UWIN, created as a result of their efforts.  The
project, which appears to be even more ambitious than the gnu-win32
effort, is apparently quite far along.  Unfortunately, it is not clear
whether the UWIN package will ever become publicly available.

Hopefully, AT&T Research will see benefits to providing a freely
available Unix environment for the Windows 95 & NT platforms.  For
one, it could help break the strangle hold of the cumbersome Win32 API
and provide opportunities for vendors (such as AT&T) of products based
on more openly supported programming interfaces.  With any luck, the
continued success and popularity of the Cygnus gnu-win32 effort will
help drive this point home.
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