Questionable statement in article

[Ceri Davies]

On Mon, Aug 09, 2004 at 01:40:28PM +0200, Devon H. O'Dell wrote:

> Okay, this is getting really ridiculous, and the statement is false. It
> would be rather simple to figure out which syscalls FreeBSD was unable
> to translate and thereby make a certain piece of software fail to run on
> FreeBSD. For instance, there are certain socket options in Linux that
> are not avaialble on FreeBSD and cannot be emulated. Software that makes
> use of these options will _not_ run on FreeBSD.

Firstly, I'll note that the article is talking about BSD, not FreeBSD.

> A more accurate statement would be:
> 
> FreeBSD_Compilable_Code + FreeBSD_Binaries + FreeBSD_Emulatable(Linux) >
> Binaries(Linux)
> 
> You can't blindly make this statement, however, without first proving
> the following:
> 
> Binaries(Linux) - FreeBSD_Emulatable(Linux) < FreeBSD_Compilable_code +
> FreeBSD_Binaries.
> 
> Now, once you factor in the SVR4 compatibility and others, this
> statement gets exceedingly difficult to make. When somebody wants to
> audit the amount of binaries that will run on FreeBSD and get a number,
> let me know.

Since SVR4 gets bundled on the right hand side of the equation above,
along with BSDI, IBCS2, Interactive Unix, SCO Unix, SCO Xenix, and
Solaris (this selection just from the i386 NetBSD port and excluding
other free BSDs), the statement becomes slightly easier to make, I
think.

> Also, it's interesting to note that OpenBSD will do the same -- it has
> Linux syscall translation as well -- it will also run FreeBSD binaries.
> Does this mean that OpenBSD has a conceviably larger amount of binaries
> that will run on it than FreeBSD?

Well, yes.

Ceri
-- 
It is not tinfoil, it is my new skin.  I am a robot.
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