[TUHS] Any UNIX With No C In Userland?

[Larry McVoy]

I didn't have anything to do with the compiler group so I have no idea what
they were thinking.  So long as cc compiled the kernel without bugs, they
did their own thing.  I have no idea who thought it was a good idea to
unbundle C, I was not a fan but wasn't important enough that my opinion
held sway.

Rob Gingell would likely know.

On Sat, Mar 01, 2025 at 06:28:58PM -0500, Clem Cole wrote:
> Larry, you can correct me here, but it was when Sun finally wrote their own
> - learning from DEC [and Masscomp] that the real Bill Wulf' Green book
> style optimizer with its C compiler generated better code than the PCC
> ones.   Unfortunately, Sun's marketing (also ex-DEC) decided it could be a
> revenue source.  Unlike Masscomp, where we said to our ex-DEC marketing
> types??? "Charge for the Fortran if you want to, but C is part of the
> system."
> 
> IIRC: Sun continued to bundled a simple C compiler so you build the kernel,
> but it was trying to make $s on the compiler suite.
> 
>  SW economics can be difficult.   Application firms like CAD or tools
> firms, of course, make all their money on their SW.   But systems
> companies make their money on the HW and need the compilers to generate the
> applications to build the ecosystem to sell the HW.   Funny thing, I have
> always said huge reason BLISS lost was that DEC charged for $5000 per CPU
> for it on TOPS or VMS, while  C was free with UNIX - even though the
> difference is the resulting code was remarkable.   So many people stayed
> away because they did not want to spend the extra $s.
> ???
> 
> On Sat, Mar 1, 2025 at 5:08???PM Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Sat, Mar 1, 2025 at 5:01???PM Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM)
> > <lyndon at orthanc.ca> wrote:
> > > segaloco via TUHS writes:
> > > > Given that anything that obeys the ABI and has assembler entries to
> > the ker=
> > > > nel
> > > > can request services, it seems to me it would be possible to stand up a
> > > > user-land without C being present.  Have any UNIXen ever done this
> > after th=
> > > > e
> > > > advent of C?
> > >
> > > SunOS 4.0 or 4.1 was when the Sun geniouses unbundled the C compiler
> > > and made it a $$$ add on.  That move single-handedly made GCC the
> > > reference compiler moving forward.
> >
> > I believe that was in the shift to Solaris, aka SunOS 5.x. As I
> > recall, even the last versions of SunOS 4 came with a bundled compiler
> > (though it was pre-ANSI, and probably PCC based).
> >
> >         - Dan C.
> >

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Larry McVoy           Retired to fishing          http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat