Somewhat off topic, for which apologies beforehand.
I’m looking for source code of Plan9’s first edition. A quick search on Google came up dry.
Would that source be publicly available? Or were the licensing restrictions such that it only exists in non-public archives?
Warren wrote:
> I would like to do some work on how the content changed over time.
> The result would be, for me, an interesting paper to read but somehow
> I think the readership base would be limited :-)
"Critical editions", as they are known in literary circles,
garner wide respect if not wide readership. Go for it.
Incidentally the earliest diff programs I know about date
from about 1969. One was by Steve Johnson, specifically
for comparing comdecks--compressed assembler source. The
other arose in service of critical editions.
Doug
All, I just got an e-mail from a TUHS member who would like to lay their
hands on a copy of the original Unix SOSP paper:
Anyway, I am trying to get my hands on the original 1972/73 paper on The
UNIX TIME-SHARING SYSTEM that was published at the SOSP ‘73 Proceedings
of the fourth ACM symposium on operating system principles.
I do have the 1974 and 1978 reprint papers. But, I really want the
1972/73 original. I see it in the ACM digital library, but the full
text PDF prints only the abstract.
Does anybody have a scan of the original SOSP paper?
I'd also like a copy of the 1974 reprint in CACM.
Thanks, Warren
Noel Chiappa <jnc(a)mercury.lcs.mit.edu> comments on the use of "home
directory" on Thu, 27 Sep 2018 19:14:19 -0400 (EDT):
>> I _did_ find "home directory" in the ITS documentation; the oldest doc file I
>> found it in was dated 5/25/79. If ITS was the source, not sure how it spread -
>> maybe via EMACS?
I looked in my own TECO code (> 12K lines), and found "home directory"
in two files with internal date headers from 1983.
I scanned my archive of TOPS-20 emacs source code and found these
uses:
% grep -i 'home dire' *
babyl.info:operating system; this file resides in the user's "home directory" and
conv.info:stands for the user's home directory. If neither file exists, the
emacs.info:Home Directory Your home directory is the one on which your mail and
emacs.info: may be the same as your home directory's name.
emacs.mss:@Index{Home Directory}@Index{User Name}
emacs.mss:it should be called @ITS{<home directory>;<user name> EVARS instead of EMACS.}
emacs.mss:@Index{Home Directory}
emacs.mss:EMACS into the file @ITS[<home directory>;TS ESAVE](a)Twenex[ESAVE.EXE]
Binary file mkdump.info matches
teco.archiv:*) FS U HSNAMEnd FS U MAILllow you to get a user's home directory
teco.archiv:* FS HSNAME$ is the user's home directory, as a numeric sixbit word.
teco.archiv:On old versions of ITS that don't have home directories, it is the
teco.archiv:same as FS MSNAME$. The home directory is (presumably) where such things
teco.archiv: B) People whose home directory is a shared directory
tecord.info: If you @EJ a file TS FOO on your home directory, then FOO^K
tecord.info:FS HSNAME s the user's home directory. The home directory
tecord.ref:FS HSNAME user's home directory
tecord.ref:FS U HSNAME used to determine a user's home directory
Here are the file dates:
% grep -l -i 'home dire' * | xargs ls -log
-rw-r--r-- 1 51376 Jun 5 1981 babyl.info
-rw-r--r-- 1 81689 Oct 16 1981 conv.info
-rw-r--r-- 1 466772 Dec 28 1981 emacs.info
-rw-r--r-- 1 412673 Oct 16 1981 emacs.mss
-rw-r--r-- 1 12570 May 24 1982 mkdump.info
-rw-r--r-- 1 121865 Oct 16 1981 teco.archiv
-rw-r--r-- 1 225207 Oct 16 1981 tecord.info
-rw-r--r-- 1 16407 Dec 28 1981 tecord.ref
In another directory named emacs-162, there were 18 files containing
"home directory"; the oldest is dated 6-Mar-1980.
However, when I dug into teco.archiv, I found that the match occurred
in a change log block that begins
TECO 699:
RMS 10/14/77 Many changes
...
ITS only:
Thus, 14-Oct-1977 is the earliest date that I can find for "home
directory", credited to Richard Stallman.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Nelson H. F. Beebe Tel: +1 801 581 5254 -
- University of Utah FAX: +1 801 581 4148 -
- Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB Internet e-mail: beebe(a)math.utah.edu -
- 155 S 1400 E RM 233 beebe(a)acm.org beebe(a)computer.org -
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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> My memory is that the term "home directory" predates /home - perhaps on
> other OS's such as TOPS-20, but I don't have time to research that.
Well, I looked at the "Introduction to MIT-XX" (a TOPS-20 machine), and it
also used the terms "logged-in directory" (home dir) and "connected directory"
(current dir).
I couldn't find any use of 'home' in the V6 documentation.
I _did_ find "home directory" in the ITS documentation; the oldest doc file I
found it in was dated 5/25/79. If ITS was the source, not sure how it spread -
maybe via EMACS?
Noel
> I couldn't find any use of 'home' in the V6 documentation.
$HOME was set by default in v7. It probably dates from the
advent of enviroment variables.
Doug
At college we had /h but that may be an interdata/edition7 thing. mine was /h/beng4/ssimon.
each course/year was in a separate disk partition - if group filled their partition other groups could still work.
-Steve
As a followup to discussions on this thread about hardware
architectures, some of you may be interested in this new letter
published today:
Letters to the editor: Hennessy and Patterson on the roots of RISC
Comm. ACM 61(10) 6 (2018)
https://doi.org/10.1145/3273019http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/3280000/3273019/p6-friedman.pdf
The short two-paragraph letter is from Fred Brooks, noted computer
architect, author, and computer scientist.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Nelson H. F. Beebe Tel: +1 801 581 5254 -
- University of Utah FAX: +1 801 581 4148 -
- Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB Internet e-mail: beebe(a)math.utah.edu -
- 155 S 1400 E RM 233 beebe(a)acm.org beebe(a)computer.org -
- Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ -
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> From: Dan Cross
> particular in sites with lots of users like universities and
> production-focused corporate groups
The existence of /usr, /usr/bin, /etc, /lib, etc dates back to the Research
group at Bell, so I don't think we can look to these other environments for an
explanation.
> "Hmm. Well, we've got space in /usr: create /usr/bin
I seem to recall reading (don't recall where, OTTOMY) an explanation for the
creation of /usr/bin, and I think it was performance related; IIRC the issue
was that they wanted to keep the directory size down (both for disk block
caching, and search time, reasons). Or maybe that was later on, and it was
originally created for 'user-maintained' ancillary programs (another vague
memory)?
> The more intriguing possibility from the antiquarian point of view is
> whether someone coined "/home" and then THAT led to the rise of the "home
> directory" nomenclature.
My memory is that the term "home directory" predates /home - perhaps on other
OS's such as TOPS-20, but I don't have time to research that. (I did look
quickly in the Multics docs, and it has 'working directory', i.e. current dir
- but it refers to the home dir as 'original WD', i.e. the WD at the time of
login.)
Noel
