From: utzoo!decvax!cca!lauren@UCLA-Security@sri-unix
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Title: How would the French implement Unix?
Article-I.D.: sri-unix.2622
Posted: Wed Aug 11 01:09:32 1982
Received: Fri Aug 13 05:15:43 1982

From: lauren at UCLA-Security (Lauren Weinstein)
Date: 27 July 1982 1635-PDT (Tuesday)
You could certainly be sure that, as usual, they would *never* dream
of doing it the same way as everyone else.

The July issue of "Mini-Micro Systems" has a rather interesting
article about the French efforts to implement a full Unix system,
including all utilities, in Pascal instead of C.

Versions for the Honeywell Level 6, 8086, 68000, 6809, and PDP-11's
are expected.  This system is being called "Sol" and is widely
discussed (apparently) in the European Unix Users' Group meetings.

I would be interested in learning more about the history of this
project.  There were some interesting quotes:

"Problems that may arise with Pascal were detected by replacing
chunks of C coding with parts written in Pascal..."

"It is not obvious that C is better than Pascal in NS16000-based
machines or Honeywell minicomputers... however... programmers
used to C will not like Pascal, and vice versa."

"Research institutes will get the Sol source code "almost free,"
as with Unix..."

-----

I am not a big Pascal fan, and I must frankly admit that as far
as I'm concerned, the whole idea seems counterproductive in terms
of true system standardization is concerned.  Still, I thought
that I'd mention the project in this forum since it has not
been noted previously in UNIX-WIZARDS to my knowledge.  I wonder
what sort of licensing/distribution agreement the Sol group is
working with?  It sure sounds like they started with Unix source
code...

--Lauren--