[Simh] Systems Engineering Labs (SEL) simh simulator available

[Clem Cole]

On Wed, Dec 26, 2018 at 7:03 PM David Brownlee <abs at absd.org> wrote:

> Well, Joyent also makes binary pkgsrc packages for SmartOS, macOS, and
> CentOS/REL :) https://pkgsrc.joyent.com/
>

xkcd on standards <https://xkcd.com/927/>  sigh.....

Note: I have lived this issue at Intel for +10 years BTW [we make a very
slick set of development tools that are compatible across different
OS's]....

So I will step on top of Soap Box ....

As I often have to remind some of our more our engineers at work *installs,
particularly binary installs, must be socially compliant with the OS* - *i.e.
what the customer expects.  This is the 'least astonishment principle.'*

That means custom installers that are common for the tool, but different
from the native OS are a no-no if you really want someone to use the tool
as a binary. [And that's expensive and hard to do well BTW].

Yup, custom installers makes it easier for >>you<< but not for the person
doing the installs.   So if you make the choice to support an OS,
particularly as a binary, then the install needs to be for that OS --- for
winders its a different  installer than from DOS which is different than VMS.
  For VMS its the DEC Installer.  For, the UNIX family Solaris is different
from the loathsome DEC setld(8) of Ultrix and Tru64, which is different
from IBM AIX which is different from HP-UX, etc....  Linux gets really
strange on the binary front.   The good news is the commerical folks using
Linux it is primarily rpm and there are tools the convert from tools that
convert from rpm to yum/getapt etc., but generally Linux folks generally do
not want a binary installer ;-)  But there are N different Linux package
managers and each one is 'better' than the other?   If you have a binary
distribution for your tool, which do you use?

That said ....

simh is a wonderful tool and the fruits of the labor of many people.  But I
see it as primarily a github (source) release.   When Mark graceously does
make a binary, he seems to follow least astonishment.   But since he has
made the sources available and some distro's have picked it up and created
binaries of their own, many have done a poor job of following up with the
source distribution.   Which of course, fails the least astonishment
principle also (because it's easier for the distro maintainers of course).
They can claim they have 'simh' but because they made it eaiser for
themselves, they are in effect an older (unmaintained) 'fork' or the tree.

And this is the of course is a flaw in FOSS.   The economics don't follow.
 Ecomonically, you want to make it as easy on the builder of the tool if
your 'product' is the sources.  Which is what Mark does (an excellent job
IMO as its pretty impressive the number of OS's that can build it).

But if you take the sources and package it and create an installer ... well
Mark and Bob should speak for themselves .... but I think that is you own
problem; not simh's

Stepping down from Soap Box ...

I will grant you that the users of simh are likely to be a tad more techie
than 'the average bear.'   But to me that says, you can trust them to go to
github, do a 'clone' and then build it themselves.

My thinking at least ....

Clem
ᐧ
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