[illumos-Developer] ON is bloated and a bunch of stuff that doesn't need to be there should be ripped out (was Re: Heads up: perl 5.8.4 removal)

[Garrett D'Amore]

On Tue, 2010-11-09 at 19:02 +0000, Peter Tribble wrote:
> > Its not a formal list... I'd have to go looking.  One thing that I do
> > think we can probably clean up is the support for legacy SunOS 4.1 a.out
> > executables.  Its been a few decades now, and I think the need to
> > support executing such programs has long since passed.
> 
> That's one place I disagree. I regard SunOS4.x binary compatibility as a
> massive advantage - and I run a *lot* of stuff that way. Most of it simply
> can't be rebuilt (no source, even if the company that made it was still in
> existence) or replaced. Sun hardware and software has lifetimes
> measured in decades; many companies rely on this (often unknowingly).
> 


Right, but can't these be run in an S10C zone or in a VM?

At some point continuing to provide first class support for some this
ancient stuff approaches insanity.

I'd like to know what stuff it is that still needs to be run this way.
We are talking *really* old software here... much of it would probably
have been written before some of our participants were even *born*.

	- Garrett