- From: Steven Jenkins <steven.jenkins_at_ieee.org>
- Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2003 13:42:34 -0700
Frank Mori Hess wrote: > This [POSIX standardization] seems premature to me. It may be. I'm more interested in the general question of whether it would be a good thing. If it makes sense to wait, that's OK. > Also, there doesn't seem to be any pressing need since there > aren't any competing, 'almost compatible' implementations I'm aware of. The purpose of standards isn't to arbitrate between competing implementations. It's more to declare a certain class of problem to be adequately addressed by a certain approach, where adequate really means agreeable to a reasonably large cross section of interested parties. The POSIX pthreads standard is a good example. Pthreads is by no means the only way to achieve multithreading, but the fact that it's a standard means that platform vendors are more willing to implement it than they would be otherwise. If you want to write portable multithreaded programs, this is a Good Thing. The main benefits I can imagine from a POSIX Comedi standard are: 1. Implementation on more platforms, including non-Linux OSes, embedded systems, etc. My own open source application runs on pretty much anything Unix-like. If the Comedi API were supported on OS X, FreeBSD, Solaris, etc., the data acquisition functions would too. (They're currently disabled on non-Linux platforms.) Portability is good. 2. Support from a/d and d/a board vendors. It's easier to justify the cost of developing a driver if you can make some marketing claims to go with it. And a stable, well-documented API is a much lower risk for the vendor. Steve
Received on 2003-04-13Z19:42:34