x11r4 on ISC UNIX: findings

[Mats Wichmann]

A while back, I asked for information about known problems in porting
x11r4 to ISC UNIX.  I promised a summary if there was interest. As
usual in net-land, there were many more requests for a summary than
there were answers.  However, here's the deal.

     1.	The port ISC does is a little unusual in that it it uses sockets
	for network connections and stream pipes for local connections.  It
	is not clear to me whether ISC's TCP includes UNIX domain sockets
	at all; it either doesn't or they don't work very well, or I
	misunderstood something.

	At any rate, setting up a port to work this way involves a bit of
	busy-work, since the code as it comes from MIT expects you to pick
	one of: BSD-style, which uses sockets; _or_ AT&T-style, which uses
	Streams.

     2.	It appears that ISC TCP doesn't provide FIONREAD on sockets.  This
	needs to be worked around, since the Xlib code expects that this
	will work if sockets are used (I don't know - maybe the server
	expects this too; I didn't check).

     3. There may be some minor include file issues if doing a Streams-only
	port: someone mentioned, for example, that "sioctl.h" needs to be
	included.

    On the whole, it is expected to be relatively straightforward.
    Item (2) may be a problem.

If I actually end up trying to do the port, and there are any actual issues
other than those raised, I will post a followup.  Sure wish I was receiving
news so I could see if this topic has come up in comp.windows.x....

Mats Wichmann
UNIX / X Window System Consultant
uunet!unisoft!alruna!mats