GL questions to the world

[Kevin Tureski]

In article <1991May14.193934.6923 at jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>, rodney at dgp.toronto.edu (Rodney Hoinkes) writes:
|> We have run into great problems due to the fact that we are
|> running IRIX 3.3.2 but want to give our program to a group
|> running 3.2 (Alias supported <- probably why they are still
|> behind). 

As the guy at Alias that makes darn sure our s/w packages run properly
on the latest SGI o/s, I'll take a little of the net bandwidth to
quell a rumour that may start from the above statement.

It's actually part of our agreement with SGI that we are responsible for
updating our support customers to the latest release. Once we've verified
that our own release is behaving as expected under the version of IRIX we
choose to qualify the product under, we generally ship that version of IRIX
in the same box that the Alias s/w is shipped in to customers who have
SGI maintenance contracts through Alias and are in good standing (ie paid
up).

And those customers as described above received IRIX 3.3.2 quite some time
ago; early Feb as I recall. This is true of most or all of the major VARs
out there: it's just too much of a hassle to keep the field on an old IRIX;
demos fail because the code expected different behaviour, confusion arises
during support calls, etc.

You will however note that I said "the version of IRIX we choose to qualify
the product under". This is to safeguard ourselves and our customers: we and
the other large VARs spend a lot of time testing our products to ensure
stability. If I know for a fact that IRIX 3.3.3 has a problem in it when 
used with Alias s/w, then we won't condone or support that o/s. 

SGI is very responsive to these situations and works very closely with us
when we discover a problem. I think all who attended the Developer's Forum
got a chance to see first hand the efforts that they have made and are making 
in this and related areas: "It's strategic, we're committed ..." Really, SGI
does an exemplary job, certainly orders of magnitude better than other large
3-letter companies that favour the colour blue, although I'll admit to seeing
a significant improvement from "them" lately.

And just for the record, IRIX 3.3.1 is not qualified for Alias s/w; there's
a situation that can cause the window server to crash. So that's why we insist
upon 3.3.2 (which, by the way, was delayed to include a fix for the above).
As 3.3.3 is "fix on fail" and we haven't seen any problems with 3.3.2 serious enough to warrant a full-scale retest of our s/w under 3.3.3, we can't make 
any promises, and cannot recommend its use by our customers. 

Feel free to send me direct email on this subject if you're a site that is
having any difficulty because of the version of IRIX that Alias has chosen
to qualify (and hence support) our s/w under.

--

Kevin Tureski
Director, Systems Integration
Alias Research Inc.
110 Richmond St E. 
Toronto Canada M5C 1P1
416 362-9181

ktureski at alias.com