10 Apr
2020
10 Apr
'20
5:34 p.m.
Warren has been nice enough to put 8th, 9th and 10th edition on the TUHS “Unix Tree” web
page.
There is the following question on each entry web page: “Who wants to write something
here?”
Below my suggested draft text for Eight Edition. All suggestions for improvement welcome.
===
Shortly after the release of 7th Edition, the VAX became the base machine for further Unix
development. The initial code base was the 32V port, enhanced with selected elements from
4.1BSD, such as support for virtual memory and later the TCP/IP stack. From there the code
further evolved: Eighth Edition of Unix was released by Bell Laboratories in February
1985, six years after Seventh Edition.
Key innovations in 8th Edition include ‘streams’ and the 'file system switch’, which
allowed the “everything is a file” approach to be extended to new areas. Three notable
applications built on these were the ‘/proc’ file system and new debugger API, a unified
approach to networking over Datakit, TCP/IP and phone lines, and a network file system.
Eighth Edition is also at the root of graphical user interfaces on Unix, being the
platform used for the development of the ‘Blit’ graphical terminal.
Several of the new ideas from Eigth Edition found their way into the 3rd release of System
V, although in a much modified way.
===
10 Apr
10 Apr
10:50 p.m.
It wasn't that "shortly", it was several years. Maybe just drop the
adverb, or put in actual dates. Otherwise this seems OK (except for a
typo in "Eigth".)
-rob
On Sat, Apr 11, 2020 at 1:35 AM Paul Ruizendaal <pnr(a)planet.nl> wrote:
Warren has been nice enough to put 8th, 9th and 10th edition on the TUHS “Unix Tree” web
page.
There is the following question on each entry web page: “Who wants to write something
here?”
Below my suggested draft text for Eight Edition. All suggestions for improvement
welcome.
===
Shortly after the release of 7th Edition, the VAX became the base machine for further
Unix development. The initial code base was the 32V port, enhanced with selected elements
from 4.1BSD, such as support for virtual memory and later the TCP/IP stack. From there the
code further evolved: Eighth Edition of Unix was released by Bell Laboratories in February
1985, six years after Seventh Edition.
Key innovations in 8th Edition include ‘streams’ and the 'file system switch’, which
allowed the “everything is a file” approach to be extended to new areas. Three notable
applications built on these were the ‘/proc’ file system and new debugger API, a unified
approach to networking over Datakit, TCP/IP and phone lines, and a network file system.
Eighth Edition is also at the root of graphical user interfaces on Unix, being the
platform used for the development of the ‘Blit’ graphical terminal.
Several of the new ideas from Eigth Edition found their way into the 3rd release of
System V, although in a much modified way.
===
12 Apr
12 Apr
10:51 a.m.
Below an update with comments reflected.
===
After the Seventh Edition, the VAX became the base machine for further Unix development.
The initial code base was the 32V port, enhanced with selected elements from 4.1BSD, such
as support for virtual memory and later the TCP/IP stack. From there the code further
evolved and an Eighth Edition manual was completed by Bell Laboratories in February 1985,
six years after 7th Edition. The 8th Edition source code was not as widely distributed as
the 6th and 7th Edition sources had been.
The file system in 8th Edition was rewritten to work with a bitmapped free list and
allocation clusters of 4KB (8 blocks); it also supported the V7 filesystem for backwards
compatibility with disk clusters of 1, 2 or 4 blocks.
Key innovations in the 8th Edition kernel include ‘streams’ and the 'file system
switch’, which allowed the “everything is a file” approach to be extended to new areas.
Three notable developments built on these were the ‘/proc’ file system and new debugger
API, a unified approach to networking over Datakit, TCP/IP and phone lines, and a network
file system.
Eighth Edition is also at the root of graphical user interfaces on Unix, being the
platform used for the development of the ‘Blit’ graphical terminal.
Several of the new ideas from Eighth Edition found their way into the 3rd release of
System V, although in a much modified form.
===
On Sat, Apr 11, 2020 at 1:35 AM Paul Ruizendaal
<pnr(a)planet.nl> wrote:
>
> Warren has been nice enough to put 8th, 9th and 10th edition on the TUHS “Unix Tree”
web page.
>
> There is the following question on each entry web page: “Who wants to write something
here?”
>
> Below my suggested draft text for Eight Edition. All suggestions for improvement
welcome.
>
> ===
>
> Shortly after the release of 7th Edition, the VAX became the base machine for further
Unix development. The initial code base was the 32V port, enhanced with selected elements
from 4.1BSD, such as support for virtual memory and later the TCP/IP stack. From there the
code further evolved: Eighth Edition of Unix was released by Bell Laboratories in February
1985, six years after Seventh Edition.
>
> Key innovations in 8th Edition include ‘streams’ and the 'file system switch’,
which allowed the “everything is a file” approach to be extended to new areas. Three
notable applications built on these were the ‘/proc’ file system and new debugger API, a
unified approach to networking over Datakit, TCP/IP and phone lines, and a network file
system.
>
> Eighth Edition is also at the root of graphical user interfaces on Unix, being the
platform used for the development of the ‘Blit’ graphical terminal.
>
> Several of the new ideas from Eigth Edition found their way into the 3rd release of
System V, although in a much modified way.
>
> ===
>
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Rob Pike