It really looks like this guy is just a troll at this point.
I have sympathies for the arguments. It's kinda unfortunate that Linux has taken over everything and we don't have real portable code anymore and other Unixes find themselves on the margins. x86, even x86-64 isn't really "clean". Way too much of the software ecosystem is willing to be on the bleeding edge.
I worry we're losing core bits of Unix philosophy / simplicity as things evolve. Etc.
If the arguments were completely untrue, they'd not find any purchase. But this guy is running around kicking the hornet's nest whenever possible.
I am kicking the hornets' nest because IT is in a really bad shape because of the GNU/Linux monoculture and I want for things not only to change, but to effect change. GNU/Linux got to where it is by users bitching about how great it was for two decades, so the theory goes it should work for anything else, especially where that something else is superior.
And also, I have no fear of hornets or their sting; I've been stung enough times. I have never cowered and I'm not about to start now.
To add insult to injury, I am forced to work deep in the bowels of Linux and various GNU tools like GCC because of the current market conditions, so I get to "live the dream" every day. I want things to change, and I'm doing something about it, the best way I know how, which is by raising awareness, just like all the Linux people did back in the '90's and early 2000's.
You're convincing people who would be otherwise sympathetic that your arguments have no merit, by spouting wrongness ("set -e" is a bashism!! Even though it appears in V7 unix and 3BSD!!) You can't even admit your mistake.
I've loved Solaris, NetBSD, and Irix. ZFS is pretty cool.
But it'd be pretty easy based on your posts to conclude that the only people who still advocate for that stuff are wrongheaded, pedantic curmudgeons.
I never wrote set -e is bashism. I implied that people who use set -e will also write bashisms. Goodness knows I've had to fix enough of such garbage over the years to work with Solaris' /bin/sh and I'm revolted, sick and tired of it.
In the meanwhile, notice how absolutely no one could explain what's wrong with || exit 1, other than it's "ugly" (which is a personal opinion, not a fact)?
"You can't even admit your mistake."
So let me get this straight: because I was wrong about set -e making one's program instantly unportable, my entire argument that SmartOS is a good, fast product is invalid? I guess the implication here is that because I was wrong about set -e making a shell program unportable, I am wrong about everything else, is that it?
I haven't been talking about SmartOS. This thread isn't about SmartOS-- it's actually about FPGA synthesis tools that won't run on SmartOS, and criticism of how someone got those tools to run. In this thread you are batting .000-- the whole thing you showed up to assert was wronk, and then the whole sideshow of a conversation you tried to start is bad.
set -e is a stylistic choice, though one I'd urge anyone writing scripts in Bourne and Bourne-like shells to prefer by default.
The sad thing is I generally support things like SmartOS. I have a SmartOS box at home. It's just that anytime SmartOS or anything like docker comes up on HN, annatar comes out of the woodwork to complain how shitty linux is without providing anything of value.
A while back I even tried to encourage him to explain HOW zones are better with real examples instead of just shitting all over a how-to mentioning docker. He instead attacked me and said it wasn't his job to teach anyone anything. Awesome job, the only thing anyone learned from that thread was that SmartOS users are assholes.
What's left of solaris is dying and he is helping in every way he can.
"He instead attacked me and said it wasn't his job to teach anyone anything."
Sad to read this after having taught so many information technology professionals over the three decades, some of them in the heart of Silicon Valley. What I probably told you is that I don't owe you anything, which is still true. You disrespected me and attacked me several times. Why should I teach you?
As for the "what's left of Solaris is dying" "argument", I would be careful to make such statements, as they reek of casual usage: SmartOS isn't Linux; one deploys it because one has understood his advanced capabilities and features Linux doesn't have, to do a job and do it reliably and easier than with Linux, not because it's a good old buddies club where we comb our Ken and Barbie dolls and drink-pretend to have tea at 4 o' clock. If you want an echo chamber, stick with Linux; if you need to do a job, read the SmartOS manual pages, then come back with concrete questions. I'm not about fanboyism and casual usage, "community" and all that "Stack Overflow" nonsense.
Now, with all of that out of the way: what do you need help with in SmartOS?
It is dying, though. No one wants to be beholden to Oracle.
Outside Oracle, the various efforts to use OpenSolaris derived stuff are constantly fragmented and overall shrinking in size. What little effort there is to improve things is often duplicative between the three+ branches of effort. Hardware support is more marginal than ever on OpenSolaris derived stuff.
Less and less important software compiles under and works well under it, and it's getting harder and harder to run.
"What little effort there is to improve things is often duplicative between the three+ branches of effort."
That's funny, because I'm on the mailing lists for illumos and SmartOS and I see that everything generally useful impemented in SmartOS ends up upstream in illumos. Do you have any evidence to support your claim?
It's true that less and less software compiles on Solaris 10. I have to spend time patching badly written software to get it to compile. I have however not noticed any performance impact, on the contrary, that same software runs faster on Solaris 10 (and by extension illumos and therefore SmartOS) than on GNU/Linux where it has been developed, which is a slap in the face of GNU/Linux crowd hacking on that trash fire.
SmartOS is a different story, completely different: they use pkgsrc and their library is 15,000+ packages. So the argument here is mis-information. Presumably, this is being done on purpose, "because Linux"?
I have sympathies for the arguments. It's kinda unfortunate that Linux has taken over everything and we don't have real portable code anymore and other Unixes find themselves on the margins. x86, even x86-64 isn't really "clean". Way too much of the software ecosystem is willing to be on the bleeding edge. I worry we're losing core bits of Unix philosophy / simplicity as things evolve. Etc.
If the arguments were completely untrue, they'd not find any purchase. But this guy is running around kicking the hornet's nest whenever possible.