[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)

[Joerg Schilling]

Bryan Cantrill <bryancantrill at gmail.com> wrote:

> For whatever it's worth, ripping out SunOS 4.x compatibility was
> always one of Tim Marsland's dreams.  He always demurred, and given
> how badly he wanted to do it, it was probably for good reason.  Tim is
> now a kernel engineer at Apple; don't know if he's on this list
> (Tim?), but it might be a good idea to reach out for some history
> here...

It seems that we still have users for this interface. This tells us that
there is a need after 16 years. The interface cannot be emulated, it must
be inside the kernel.

In general, when discussing whether it makes sense to remove old code, I 
believe the right arguments are:

1)	Is this interface still in use?

2)	Does it cause extra work load to keep it in?

3)	Would removing an old interface help to get more freedom with the
	future development?

Are there more arguments to discuss?

Checking this list against e.g. mkisofs and Apple HFS support would result in 
points 1) and 3) to give strongs arguments for removing support. I am hoever 
not sure whether a similar decision could be made for SunOS 4.x compatibility.

Jörg

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