Re: [MacPerl] Perl Shared Library (was Re: [MacPerl] ports andbuilds)

[Vicki Brown <vlb@cfcl.com>]

At 07:39 -0800 1/22/99, Chris Nandor wrote:
> At 10.16 -0500 1999.01.22, David Steffen wrote:
> >Is OS 8.X likely to be a supported, active, developing environment once
>OS
> >X is released?
>
> According to Apple, absolutely.  Most Macs out there cannot even run Mac
>OS X.

At 09:16 -0800 1/22/99, Paul J. Schinder wrote:
> At least as much as 7.6.1 is now.  MacOS X will only run on G3's, so
> there are a lot of Macs that can't run it.  (For example, my Powerbook
> 165 can't run MacOS 8.x, but it still works.)  Some of the software
> upgrades coming out of Apple will work under 7.6.1, so Apple must
> still pay some attention to legacy machines/OS's.  I also remember
> reading that there will be an 8.7 after MacOS X comes out, but maybe
> those plans have changed.

Speaking as someone who once worked in the Copland/Rhapsody team (they
hadn't gotten around to changing the name again before I left :-) Apple's
plans on this tend to change almost weekly... ;-)

But the latest I've heard, MacOS X is not planned to be "the commodity OS".
And Mac OS 8.* is expected to continue and be supported as the flagship
product "for a long time".  How long is long is anybody's guess; it's a
funny industry. But as people have noted, 68K Macs are still "supported" as
is Mac OS 7.*.  There are still people out there running System 6 (but they
are, as I understand it, no longer "supported").

As regards "just run perl under Mac OS X; it's Unix, after all", I
understand that the answer to this is likely to be "Well, not really".  Or
as I've been told, the motto in the halls of the OS X development team is
"Do not think that this is Unix. It's not".

There is Unixy stuff under the covers. Not as much as some of us would have
liked there to be (there are many reasons I don't work there anymore but
this one looms large). I do not expect Mac OS X to feel like Unix.  OS X
server maybe. If you check the right boxes in the preferences.  Mac OS
"Developer Kit, perhaps. Not OS X the desktop system. If there is a desktop
system...

Somebody from Apple is probably going to jump up and down on me, but I'm no
more confident now that OS X will feel just like Unix and I can throw away
MacPerl in favor of plain ol' vanilla Perl than I did over a year ago when
I left Apple. Others may be more optimistic (pessimistic? :-)

Besides, as has been pointed out several times, there's the Toolbox to
consider.  Not to mention the neat GUI interface (try using the perl
debugger under Unix sometime... MacPerl is superior).

My hope is that MacPerl and mainstream perl will slowly come together.
Matthias and Chris are working on ways to accomplish this. If we're lucky,
we'll be able to build a "MacPerl" under YellowBox or whateverthecolorbox
the BSD Unix part is (if it's an accessible "box").  But it will still be
"MacPerl" (I hope) if you compare it to what runs on, say, Solaris. MacPerl
is optimized for the Mac environment and my bet is that Mac OS X will feel
a lot more like the Mac environment than it will ever feel like, oh,
FreeBSD or Linux. Or any other *nix you might name.

Not speaking for Apple now anymore than I have since 1986...

- Vicki
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