Messages in this thread | | | Date | 16 Nov 1999 09:24:00 +0200 | From | (Kai Henningsen) | Subject | Re: vfork |
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dancer@zeor.simegen.com (Dancer) wrote on 16.11.99 in <3830A30A.EA270710@zeor.simegen.com>:
> Kai Henningsen wrote: > > > > acahalan@cs.uml.edu (Albert D. Cahalan) wrote on 10.11.99 in > > <199911100713.CAA31619@jupiter.cs.uml.edu>: > > > > > Andries Brouwer writes: > > > > > > > Linus writes: > > > > > > > > Just describe it the way it works. > > > > > > > > Yes, I did that further down the same page, describing the BSD vfork > > > > and the reasons for it. But the POSIX description is what programmers > > > > that wish to produce portable programs have to use. In a portable > > > > program vfork only has disadvantages - strictly speaking it cannot be > > > > used at all. Maybe I should add a separate LINUX DESCRIPTION. > > > > > > These are Linux man pages, are they not? > > > > So? > > > > When I look at a man page, *at least* 50% of the time I'd like to know if > > this is in any way Linux specific (and if so, in what way), and what > > exactly are the portable properties. > > > > I may then decide to rely on non-portable properties, if those make a > > significant difference to what I'm trying to do. > > Traditionally, unix man pages (or at least the ones that _used_ to come > with GNU/Linux systems)
Only the latter. I've _seen_ traditional, pre-Linux man pages; while they were great compared to, say, DOS help (which didn't even exist at the time), they weren't much compared to what a typical Linux distribution has. They certainly didn't have a concept of portability ("What, you want to use other vendor's offerings?!"). The best you could expect was, very seldom, some kind of hint about USD-BSD differences.
Traditional Unix didn't have the market of M$, but they sure had a lot of the attitude.
MfG Kai
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