Re: [TUHS] V8, V9 and V10 now in the "Unix Tree"

Doug McIlroy: The v8 manual was printed in 1985, but the system was not "released" in the ordinary sense until a couple of years ago. Some v8 features made it out into the world via USG; some were described in open literature or Usenix presentations, but I believe none were formally shipped out of the company. I'm surprised; I thought copies of the V8 manual existed when I arrived at the Labs in mid-1984, but the date on the title page is indeed February 1985. There was no general release of V8 like those for earlier Research systems, but there was a quasi-official V8 tape sent to a handful of universities under a special letter agreement. I remember working on that with Dennis, checking that everything compiled and worked properly in a chroot environment before the tape was written. I think that happened in the summer of 1985. I don't remember our doing that work, to make a single coherent consistency-checked release tape, for any subsequent system; just one-off caveat-emptor snapshots. Norman Wilson Toronto ON