Standards Update (4 of 4): IEEE P1003

[Moderator, John S. Quarterman]

                      Standards Update
        An update on UNIX and C Standards Activities

                      January 21, 1988

             Written for the USENIX Association
              by Shane P. McCarron, NAPS Inc.

Status of the IEEE P1003 Working Groups:

   - 1003.1 - System Services Interface

     The .1 working group has reached an interesting point
     in its life.  Since the standard they have produced is
     now in final ballot and ballot resolution, the working
     group in effect has nothing more to do.  At the
     December meeting they tried to decide what, if
     anything, should be done by this body in the future.
     Although no decision on this was made, many good
     options were suggested.

     Most promising among these is the design of a language
     independent description of POSIX.  One of the
     requirements that ISO made of POSIX when it was adopted
     as a Draft Proposed Standard last fall was that at some
     point in the future it be described in such a way that
     they functionality could be understood without an
     understanding of the C language.  ISO recognized that
     it was unrealistic to make this a requirement before
     adopting the standard, but felt that it was reasonably
     important.  I feel that this is something the working
     group will be taking on soon after the Full Use
     Standard is approved by IEEE.

   - 1003.2 - Shell and Tools Interface

     The Shell and Tools group is operating under a very
     ambitious schedule.  The National Bureau of Standards
     (NBS) has indicated that they are going to declare a
     Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) based on
     the command set in the .2 standard, and that they are
     going to do so in the summer of '88.  This working
     group only started serious work 1 year ago, and has
     already produced a larger document than the .1 group
     did in 4.  The group is working hard to make sure that
     the command set is locked down before the deadline
     being imposed by NBS.

     Unfortunately, this has the consequence that many
     decisions are being made as rapidly as possible.  I am
     afraid that the resulting standard may be one that is

IEEE P1003, January 21, 1988    Shane P. McCarron, NAPS Inc.


Standards Update           - 2 -          USENIX Association

     flawed, if only because the group is moving forward too
     fast.  On the other hand, the .1 group was guilty of
     exactly the opposite, and NBS pressure has forced that
     group to really get its act together.  It has proven to
     be a boon there, and it may do so here as well.

     The Shell and Tools group has a milestone schedule
     something like:

           Date        Milestone

           Mar '88     Command Selection frozen;
                       75% described.

           Jun '88     100% commands described;
                       functional freeze

           Oct '88     Clean-up, slack; produce
                       "mock ballot" for draft (#8);
                       international signoff.

           Jan '89     Resolve mock objections;
                       produce balloting draft (#9)

           Apr '89     Resolve ballot objections;
                       produce final standard.

           Jul '89     Final standard approved by IEEE

     This may not appear to be all that hectic a pace, but I
     can assure you that it is.  When I say that the
     commands are 100% described, it means that the current
     functionality of each command that has been included in
     the standard (a substantial part of the current "un*x"
     command set) is described in painful detail.  The goal
     of the standard is to describe each command in such a
     way that a person who has never seen a un*x machine can
     write the commands from scratch.  It's a lot of text.
     With about 75% of the commands in, and those being
     about 75% described (albeit incorrectly in some cases)
     the document is now approaching 400 pages.  In a future
     report I will tell you just what is involved in a
     command description.  We don't have the space this time
     :-)

   - 1003.3 - Testing and Verification

     This is another group that has been very active in the
     last year or so.  They have the dubious honor of
     figuring out how to test that implementations of the .1
     standard are actually conforming.  Although the IEEE is

IEEE P1003, January 21, 1988    Shane P. McCarron, NAPS Inc.


Standards Update           - 3 -          USENIX Association

     not going to be providing any validation services or
     rating and systems, P1003 thought that it was important
     that they define what parts of the system should be
     tested in what ways.

     The .3 group seems to be on track for balloting within
     the next 6 to 9 months.  There work is very far along,
     and a verification suite is already being worked on by
     the NBS based on the .3 assertion list about POSIX.
     Although the .3 document will not be as earth-
     shattering as POSIX, it is a still a very important
     step - actually showing how to test conformance to a
     standard at the same time you are defining one.

   - 1003.4 - Real Time

     Until recently, all the real time considerations in
     POSIX were being looked into by a /usr/group technical
     committee.  Last fall that committee decided that their
     research was mature enough that they could actually
     start the work of producing a standard about it.  The
     real time work promises to add much of the
     functionality that I and many others feel is absolutely
     necessary in POSIX.  Things like semaphores, shared
     memory, and event processing.  All of those inter-
     process communication things that were left out of the
     .1 standard because they just did not have the time.

     Unfortunately, there is quite a bit of dissension as to
     how all of these things should be implemented.  Not
     just IPC, but also contiguous files, timers, and those
     things that a real time application would need to
     really be real time.  After talking to some of the
     people who attended the December meeting, I would guess
     that this group has a long way to go.

     However, what will happen when they get there?  At this
     time I'm guessing that the .4 document will be
     positioned as a supplement to the .1 standard.  It
     should require no changes to the .1 standard, and will
     probably be a set of optional facilities, as job
     control and some others are already.  When this
     standard is finally produced, it will answer many of
     the objections we have heard to POSIX all along.  I am
     sure that it will be well received.  Let's hope that it
     can be timely enough to be useful.

IEEE P1003, January 21, 1988    Shane P. McCarron, NAPS Inc.

Volume-Number: Volume 13, Number 5