Yes, one of them has made it into a quite useful system utility. Look at http://ioccc.org/years.html#1998_schweikh3 The real world version of this is available as a FreeBSD port in sysutils/samefile or as a
./configure;make;make install
application from this comment author's homepage:-) See URL above. Don't forget to check out this year's one liner.
I know you asked specifically for *games* construction set (I remember those well from my Sinclair ZX Spectrum days of yore). Let's generalize as far as we can: the construction sets of today are the programming languages and associated compilers. And for sure, there are a lot more than 15-20 years ago.
Being a committer and having read the relevant mailing lists, let me add two more reasons, that I think have so far not been mentioned. Remember what we are talking about: perl has been removed from the base system in order to make the build perl-independent. Why is this a Good Thing?
For once it saves us on the order of 45MB repo space. The build itself didn't need more than a few in-place s/foo/bar/g which we now do with sed, awk, sh, the tools we need to build anyway. Building perl as a prerequisite for just a few variable substitutions was obviously overkill.
The most compelling reason IMHO is: you just can't cross-configure perl on arch A for arch B--it will always be built for the host it is configured on (unlike e.g. the compiler tool chain). With support for alpha and sparc this has become an endless source of frustration.
Being a FreeBSD committer, I might qualify as one of the "freebsd people" your question is addressed to.
First, I can see no lack of enthusiasm, not from jkh, let alone the BSD commiters, developers or user base. The steadily growing mailing list subscriptions are only one of many indicators.
If you had read jkh's letter you would not have missed that he is not stopping work on FreeBSD, on the contrary, without the managerial work as a core member he can actually contribute *more* code and knowing jkh I am sure he'll raise his voice on many issues concerning the BSDs in the future.
The rest of your article seems to miss the current state of affairs so much that Richard P Feynman would probably attribute it with the same line he used for crank theories -- "not even wrong". To be more specific:
"poor quality of development tools" -- you mean make(1), gcc(1), cvs(1) or what? Care to elaborate when they are actually the same tools any linux (or for that matter unix) hacker uses?
Typing
$ cd/usr/src; cvs update; make world
for the first time and watching the complete system being built was one of the most beautiful experiences in my hacker life.
"Very little projects from the FreeBSD community":
You apparently have a different understanding of what constitutes a Linux or FreeBSD project than I have. Linux being kernel-only, lets address kernel projects going on in FreeBSD:
fine grained SMP locking
fine-grained privileges (capabilities)
Access Control Lists
KAME Project, a free IPv6/IPsec stack for BSD
Mandatory Access Control
Soft Updates: Asynchronous Meta-data Protection in File Systems
And there's tons more for the userland, e.g. the
POSIX 2001 = IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 comformance project (which I regard my baby to some extent).
Have a look at http://www.de.freebsd.org/projects/index.html for an exhaustive list of projects.
"controlled development model"? In FreeBSD more than 300 committers have write access to the repository. How does that compare to Linus, the benevolent dictator over the linux kernel?
Funny that arch linux hacker Alan Cox is also actively working on the FreeBSD kernel. He seems to have no fear of working for both camps, heck, he might even be working on the Hurd and other OSes. The FreeBSD people couldn't care less. We value everybody's technical expertise and that is exactly what makes our community a place to be. Come to think of it: instead of uttering FUD why not learn from each other about strengths and weaknesses? Why the NIH attitude?
I give you a half point on the "no companies involved" issue. To be frank, the Windriver episode was not something to be proud of. I have no real insights into what went on inside WRS, but if I had to guess, I'd attribute it to lack of real enthusiasm. Other companies in the meantime have taken the role Walnut Creek had in the past, notably http://www.freebsdservices.com/ and http://www.freebsdmall.com/ They seem to do so well that I got the FreeBSD 4.5 DVD for free (like all 300+ committers).
With all this combined enthusiasm I have absolutely no doubt that FreeBSD will continue to have a great future.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, one of them has made it into a quite useful system utility. Look at http://ioccc.org/years.html#1998_schweikh3
The real world version of this is available as a FreeBSD port in sysutils/samefile or as a
application from this comment author's homepage
I know you asked specifically for *games* construction set (I remember those well from my Sinclair ZX Spectrum days of yore). Let's generalize as far as we can: the construction sets of today are the programming languages and associated compilers. And for sure, there are a lot more than 15-20 years ago.
Regards, Jens
First, I can see no lack of enthusiasm, not from jkh, let alone the BSD commiters, developers or user base. The steadily growing mailing list subscriptions are only one of many indicators. If you had read jkh's letter you would not have missed that he is not stopping work on FreeBSD, on the contrary, without the managerial work as a core member he can actually contribute *more* code and knowing jkh I am sure he'll raise his voice on many issues concerning the BSDs in the future.
The rest of your article seems to miss the current state of affairs so much that Richard P Feynman would probably attribute it with the same line he used for crank theories -- "not even wrong". To be more specific:
"poor quality of development tools" -- you mean make(1), gcc(1), cvs(1) or what? Care to elaborate when they are actually the same tools any linux (or for that matter unix) hacker uses? Typing
$ cd /usr/src; cvs update; make world
for the first time and watching the complete system being built was one of the most beautiful experiences in my hacker life.
"Very little projects from the FreeBSD community": You apparently have a different understanding of what constitutes a Linux or FreeBSD project than I have. Linux being kernel-only, lets address kernel projects going on in FreeBSD:
- fine grained SMP locking
- fine-grained privileges (capabilities)
- Access Control Lists
- KAME Project, a free IPv6/IPsec stack for BSD
- Mandatory Access Control
- Soft Updates: Asynchronous Meta-data Protection in File Systems
And there's tons more for the userland, e.g. the POSIX 2001 = IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 comformance project (which I regard my baby to some extent). Have a look at http://www.de.freebsd.org/projects/index.html for an exhaustive list of projects."controlled development model"? In FreeBSD more than 300 committers have write access to the repository. How does that compare to Linus, the benevolent dictator over the linux kernel? Funny that arch linux hacker Alan Cox is also actively working on the FreeBSD kernel. He seems to have no fear of working for both camps, heck, he might even be working on the Hurd and other OSes. The FreeBSD people couldn't care less. We value everybody's technical expertise and that is exactly what makes our community a place to be. Come to think of it: instead of uttering FUD why not learn from each other about strengths and weaknesses? Why the NIH attitude?
I give you a half point on the "no companies involved" issue. To be frank, the Windriver episode was not something to be proud of. I have no real insights into what went on inside WRS, but if I had to guess, I'd attribute it to lack of real enthusiasm. Other companies in the meantime have taken the role Walnut Creek had in the past, notably http://www.freebsdservices.com/ and http://www.freebsdmall.com/ They seem to do so well that I got the FreeBSD 4.5 DVD for free (like all 300+ committers).
With all this combined enthusiasm I have absolutely no doubt that FreeBSD will continue to have a great future.
Regards,
Jens, who is proud being a part of it.