[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 Fri, 2010-11-12 at 05:43 -0800, ken mays wrote:
> 

> 
> The illumos-modified ON kernel does not need to meet any of those requirements (i.e. SunOS 4.x compat, Perl 5.8 inclusion, future SPARC support, etc.).
> 
> Remember, the fork process allows Illumos developers to work on ON kernel variant(s) at their own peril or benefit. That is the joy of kernel hacking.
> 
> If the community wants certain 'legacy-related' requirements, we have Oracle Solaris 10/11 for now...
> 
> ~ Ken Mays
> 



There was enough contention (surprisingly!) about removal of SunOS 4.x
compatibility that I'm shelving it for now.

That said, I will point out that we probably *could* remove this from
the x86 tree without contention... I don't think *anyone* has x86 a.out
binaries that they need.

And of course, illumos doesn't compile on SPARC right now.... but we'll
fix that soon.

I'd really like to see a list of what the 'critical' binaries from the
SunOS 4.x era that people still need to use are.  I *suspect* that these
probably should be relegated to an old Ultra 10 or Sun Blade system
still running Solaris 8 or somesuch, rather than trying to keep them
going on more modern systems.  I also suspect that many of these
programs have never versions available, which could be compiled or
purchased, and that part of the problem is a desire to avoid having to
shell out $$ for a new version.  I'm not sure that this is a problem
that illumos should be concerned about.

That said, I'll be entirely unsurprised if Oracle yanks the SunOS 4.x
binary compat.  It seems pretty clear that those uses don't have any
commercial interest to Oracle, and that Oracle is pretty focused on the
uses that *do*.  (They've already ripped out nearly all of the
accelerated graphics support for SPARC, for example, gutted the
historical packaging system, and are in process of removing support for
32-bit kernels.)

Upshot: those of you still needing this, be prepared to offer compelling
evidence supporting your case, or to modernize, or to maintain older
systems with older operating systems to keep your legacy on life
support.  It won't go on indefinitely in Solaris, nor in illumos.

	- Garrett