[Simh] Simh on Windows - long startup delays and long shutdowndelays

Eric Schmucker Eric.Schmucker at verizonbusiness.com
Mon Dec 17 01:43:32 EST 2007


I just don't accept the argument that MS employees are sitting around
thinking of ways to lock programmers into their OS and tools. I don't want
to start an argument about this since it's very off-topic and I don't feel
that strongly about it. But I've seen many situations where MS made a good
technical decision that was best for Windows programmers and people
complained that it must have been for some evil purpose.

To a large degree our individual views on the broad range of technology out
there are influenced by the environment that we grew up on. I started on
RSTS/E (Basic+) and then VAX/VMS for many many many years. My whole view on
what makes sense architecturally was solidified from the examples in the VMS
system and library APIs.

So my first exposure to the C RTL and then Unix certainly didn't impress me.
I would never use those kind of APIs if I had a choice. You can tell when
world class developers architected a system/API and when it was written by
beginners.

Ouch. I think I may be attracting anger from some people (Unix fans) and I'm
sorry for that. I just wanted to add my support to the idea that if you grew
up on an OS like VMS, avoiding calls like fopen() is second nature.

The fact that Simh runs on so many systems is quite a feat and I respect and
praise all the developers who make it possible. But I don't envy them trying
to use the C RTL calls whenever possible to make it portable.

Eric

-----Original Message-----
From: simh-bounces at trailing-edge.com [mailto:simh-bounces at trailing-edge.com]
On Behalf Of Villy Madsen
Sent: Sunday, December 16, 2007 2:40 PM
To: simh at trailing-edge.com
Subject: [Simh] FW: Simh on Windows - long startup delays and long
shutdowndelays

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Villy Madsen [mailto:Villy.Madsen at shaw.ca] 
Sent: Sunday, December 16, 2007 12:28
To: 'Toby Thain'
Subject: RE: [Simh] Simh on Windows - long startup delays and long
shutdowndelays

I wouldn't really call it a security issue - what it really is (from my
perspective) a wake-up to the fact that file locking should be built into
the
operating system - not left as an add on to be added by the programmer.

fopen does not support the concept of setting permissions on the file.

fopen_s locks the file and allows no other application to have access to it.
There is a another call that allows sharing of the file...  (An additional
point
is the the idea of the returned value from the call being an status code
rather
than the file pointer is also (from my perspective) an improvement.  Rather
VMSish I think).

I am not a great fan of uSoft, but in this case I think that they did the
right
thing.  Come-up with something that adds some control over file operations.
The
issue is of course that C grew out of *ix, and since *ix doesn't support
file
locking, then of course there was no need to address the concept in C.

I grew up on VMS, I couldn't fathom how anyone could have written (or for
that
matter continue to use) a system that didn't support file and record locking
(ok
record locking really is dependent upon RMS - which I guess we could think
of as
an add-on) as an integral part of the OS.

As far as adding it to SimH, there is a lot of OS dependent code in SimH
right
now - another conditional within scp_fio should not be a big deal..

In the event,  I am not sure that the change fixes the problem in it's
entirety
- only time will tell..

Villy

-----Original Message-----
From: simh-bounces at trailing-edge.com [mailto:simh-bounces at trailing-edge.com]
On
Behalf Of Toby Thain
Sent: Sunday, December 16, 2007 10:05
To: Thomas Pfau
Cc: SIMH List
Subject: Re: [Simh] Simh on Windows - long startup delays and long
shutdowndelays


On 16-Dec-07, at 3:01 PM, Thomas Pfau wrote:

> Davis Johnson wrote:
>> The basic difficulty is that fopen() is standard. I had never heard 
>> of
>> fopen_s() so I did a little googling and, so far as I can tell, 
>> fopen_s is a Microsoft invention, not part of any standard.
>> From my limited experiences with the latest Visual Studio, it would
> appear that Microsoft has declared half the standard C RTL as 
> deprecated claiming some kind of security problems.  I think it's 
> really about lock-in.  If they can come up with new versions of 
> standard functions and make you think you need to use them for 
> security's sake, they can keep you from easily porting your program to 
> another platform.

I think you're on to something...

--Toby

> I fail
> to see the security issues they raise for most of the functions 
> they've replaced.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Simh mailing list
> Simh at trailing-edge.com
> http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh

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