From: Frank@mindlink.bc.ca (Frank I. Reiter)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386
Subject: Impressions of ODT 2.0
Date: 26 Aug 92 18:45:39 GMT
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Distribution: world

Last week we moved our development efforts from ODT 1.1 to ODT 2.0.  So far my
impressions of ODT 2.0 can be summarized thusly:

ODT 2.1 should be really nice.

I think 2.0 was rushed - I've found it not to be up to SCOs usual standards.
In less than a week we have found various problems, and SCO has not been able
to resolve all of them to our satisfaction.

Examples:

- In the installation notes you are warned "It is recommended that the
development system be installed in single user mode" or words to that effect.
What it should say is "You absolutely must install the development system in
single user mode or you may not be asked for a serial number and activation
key, and the compiler will not run."

I'm told this will be documented this way in the next release.

- We increased NREGION from 300 to 450 to get rid of a region table overflow.
The kernel would not relink - it complained about "missing required driver
aud".  A call to SCO got us the help we needed - running fixperm changed the
group on various link kit files and all was okay - but how did it get this way
in the first place?  There are no 3rd party drivers on this machine.

- The compiler gives is spurious warnings on correct C code which calls
functions by using a pointer to the function.  SCO's solution?  Use cc -W0 or
don't prototype the function.

Thanks a lot.  We have an application with 150,000+ lines of source code here.
We rely on prototypes and compiler warnings to aid us in our development.

I'm told this will be corrected in the next release.

- The compiler dumps core compiling modules of that same 150K line application
if symbolic debugging information is included.  SCO's solution?  Create Xenix
format binaries (which requires that we convert all of our libraries to that
format as well) or don't use symbolic debugging information.  This will be
fixed in the next release.

- We're having trouble using codeview even with the applications that WILL
compile with symbolic debugging info - the <ENTER> key is not recognized (nor
will ^M or ^J yield the desired results.)  We have a support call from SCO
scheduled on this one.  I have this terrible fear that the answer will be
"Don't use codeview - this will be fixed in the next release."



I've been hearing mention of this next release quite a lot this past week.
What I haven't heard is whether to expect it next week, next month, or next
year, or how much I'm going to have to pay for it.  If others are having as
much trouble as we are then perhaps ODT 2.0 ought not to have been released
yet.  It has fixed a bunch of annoying problems with 1.1, but the problems we
have now will have a much greater impact on our productivity.  We may go back.

This is only the experience of one site, but so far this site's recommendation
is to wait for "The next release (tm)".  I'd like to hear from other 2.0 users
who agree or disagree.

Frank.
--
___________________________________________________________________
Frank I. Reiter                 Internet: Frank@mindlink.bc.ca
MIND LINK! Communications Corp. Surrey, British Columbia, Canada
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386