From: shite@sinkhole.unf.edu (Stephen Hite) Subject: Re: GNU Hurd (was Re: BSD Unix) Date: 27 Jul 1992 13:45:30 GMT
In article <1992Jul21.131526.8920@ncsu.edu> jlnance@eos.ncsu.edu (JAMES LEWIS NANCE) writes:
>
>In article <1992Jul21.112705.6276@cs.cornell.edu>, murthy@cs.cornell.edu (Chet Murthy) writes:
>|> free unix is perhaps 2 years away - in 2 years, linux will be stable.
>|> In two years, the GNU Hurd will be stable. And AT&T can
>
>I have been wondering this for some time but have refrained from asking it
>because it sounds like a flame, but it is not.
>
>GNU has been working on Hurd for as long as I have know about them. This has
>been at least 3 years, and I have seen nothing from them. Linus has been
>working on linux for about a year and a half, and has produced a very good
>operating system. Does anyone know what is taking GNU so long? Prehaps they
>have released beta versions that I am unaware of, or prehaps they do not
>want to release anything before they get it finished? Anyone know?
>
>Thanks,
>
>Jim Nance
I've been following the Hurd saga for about 4 years. Stallman kept
saying something to the effect of "we're going to start work on
the GNU OS (before the name Hurd was used) as soon as the Mach code gets
freed up." So, really, for much of the time they've been doing more
talking than coding. The date the Mach code became free of AT&T source
has been more like a year or year and a half ago. It probably took awhile
for them to get their tools ported, including a stable version of
the GNU C library. I think they're at the point where Linux was
in October-December '91 timeframe but on a much larger scale.
A tremendous amount of time has been put into the Hurd's filesystem.
However, they're lagging in the BSD shell area because there's a guy
at Carnegie Mellon that's produced a fairly stable one now and I'll
bet he started after the M. Bushnell got cranking on his version.
Read the June GNU newsletter. It just got posted to gnu.announce last
week and mentions the CMU BSD shell. In brief, what GNU might do is
use the CMU shell in the interim and replace it later with their own.
I'm surprised Jim you didn't mention how many years Emacs 19 has been
in the works. ;-) Now *that* has been over two years in the making!
Steve Hite
shite@sinkhole.unf.edu