Re: vfork

Albert D. Cahalan (acahalan@cs.uml.edu)
Thu, 11 Nov 1999 11:23:54 -0500 (EST)


Roger Wolff writes:

> Right! While writing an application, before you know it, you're using
> a system-specific feature or extension. If only manual pages would at
> least tell me what's POSIX and what's a linux extension.

If you rely on SYSTEM DOCUMENTATION as your standards reference,
it is no surprise that you fail to write portable code. If you
wish to write portable code, you must purchase a book that covers
all the bugs and missing features that can stop you. I know of
at least two such books.

The system documentation is there to help you make the best use
of your system. Where else would one find out about implementation
details? Failure to list implementation-specific features actually
makes it _harder_ to port to other systems, since Linux assumptions
will not be properly documented.

Imagine you wanted to write a porting guide. You'd need to know
about the implementation-specific features, since you have to
provide alternatives. You'd turn to the system documentation,
only to find some generic POSIX info. Well, that is useless,
since you most likely already bought the standard.

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