Information, Transmission, Modulation, and Blog
    RSS        OpenSolaris: Innovation Matters
Who?
Richard Friedman is a senior staff information engineer documenting the Sun Studio compilers and contributing to the Sun Studio portal at developers.sun.com and the Sun HPC portal at hpc.sun.com.
rchrd wrote his first computer program in FORTRANSIT on the IBM 650 in 1962.
He also is a photographer and has a life and a radio program.
Email to rchrd at sun.com

Where Else?

»All I Know::
Information, Transmission, Modulation, and Noise

»MUSIC FROM OTHER MINDS on KALW-FM

»All I've Seen :: photo blog


Elsewhere?
»Sun Studio Developer's Portal
»Solaris Developer Blog

Search
Lijit Search
Recent Entries:

Complete Archives

Menu

XML
Site Meter

Tuesday June 27, 2006 20060627

• Sun Studio Express!

Today we released Sun Studio Express, a preview of alpha builds of the Sun Studio compilers and tools.  Here's the official blurb:

Download a preview of the next Sun Studio software release and try it out. The Sun Studio Express program now offers builds of future Sun Studio software releases, currently under development, for download. It provides developers an early look at new Sun Studio software features and technologies for testing and feedback.

Featured in this build is the new  Data Race Detection Tool. DRDT works with the performance analyzer to find runtime data races in multithreaded applications. The engineering team behind DRDT would love to see developers try it out and report back their experiences with the tool. We're using the Sun Studio forums for receiving feedback.

ยปRead about the Sun Studio Express Program


( Jun 27 2006, 09:30:43 AM PDT ) [Sun Studio] Permalink Comments [4]

Comments:

I recall a post, months back, to one of the OpenSolaris mailing lists asking about the interest level for an Open Source Studio. Is this still a possibility? I think an open sourced compiler suite would be great to go along with an open OS!

-STEVEl

Posted by Steve Logue on June 27, 2006 at 04:01 PM PDT #

Although I rarely use Studio not being a dev and all I do see the value in having an open source compiler. I'll second Steve's quest. Is it all a possibility?

Posted by che on June 28, 2006 at 06:08 AM PDT #

Well, I can see lots of problems as well as benefits. But I don't make those kinds of decisions. It's certainly not something that can happen overnight. Resources are very tight and preparing a product for open source distro is quite an intense undertaking.

Why not ask one of the engineering managers.

Posted by rchrd on June 28, 2006 at 08:38 AM PDT #

Richard has it exactly right. Sun's direction is to make all software opensource and free (two different things). So, yes, the long-term objective is indeed to do the open-source thing. At this stage, the discussion isnt about whether to open-source or not, but when and how. Its a significant effort for an organization that has not had the resources "to spare" and I dont see this as a marketing benefit/drawback that will help Sun with greater acceptance. We might do this in small steps so as to minimize the resource impact. As a development engineering manager, I'm having a hard time expressing how doing this with 10 engineers gives us (Sun, community) more value than say producing the next three DRDT like tools (just as an example). I see a more of a crying need for more CMT/MT tools than I see a need for this. Feel free to send me feedback to the contrary and maybe we can build a case, if I'm sufficiently overwhelmed, to improve its urgency. Especially in the days when Sun is cutting engineering resources (notice the latest announcement from Sun for headcount reduction, which is sure to affect R&D), this is a tough call to make. So we'll do both (better CMT tools and incremental push towards opensourcing) at a pace we can afford. Hope that explanation helps!

Posted by Vijay Tatkar on June 28, 2006 at 11:19 AM PDT #

Post a Comment:

Comments are closed for this entry.