Re: [Firebird-devel] Firebird for AIX ?

[reed m. <rf...@cr...>]

Tom Coleman wrote:
> 
> >
> > A message in the Borland newsgroups prompted this question.  Is there a
> > Firebird port for AIX?
> >
> 
>  There must indeed be a firebird port for AIX.
> 
>  The following is a summary of one developer's experience with Firebird/AIX.
>  He's had some problems with the firebird mailing list, so he contacted me
>  directly for some help with resolving problems with his UDF's.
> 
>  I asked him to summarize his experience since it might be helpful to others.
> 
>  I believe the 'rant' has to do with the fact that the expected location of
>  UDF's changed between IB V5 and V6.

If you explain to the ranter the implications of any user
being able to define the 'system' function from the C runtime
library as a UDF (as well as ANY other function of ANY shared library
on the system), perhaps he might be less upset that the UDF
directory is now restricted. This is not simply changing old
behaviour for the sake of it, but fixing a vary serious bug.
If he really wants the old behaviour back, he can add /usr/lib
to the UDF path. This should be mentioned in our readme/release notes
as a change from previous versions.

(* reed goes back to lurking *)

[...]
>  begin rant {
> 
>  I really wish that software designers would design in new features without
>  breaking code that has worked for years.  It is all well and good to
>  improve the product by adding new features, but deliberately breaking
>  existing code is unacceptable.  Simply telling people that it is broken by
>  burying a small reference to the fact deep in the manual is also not
>  acceptable.  Speaking just for myself I don't have the time or the
>  inclination to re-read an entire manual set every time I get a new release.
> 
>  It also seems bizarre that sticking an absolute path in front of the
>  library name doesn't override the default setting.
> 
>  All this ranting is not directed at the firebird developers specifically
>  since I know that this stuff was broken before it was open sourced, but I
>  believe that this is something we should all bear in mind before we start
>  hacking in new features.
> 
>  } end rant
> 
> 


--
Reed Mideke
email: rfm(at)cruzers.com  -If that fails:  rfm(at)portalofevil.com