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<div class="section" id="picking-platforms">
<span id="phk-platforms"></span><h1>Picking platforms<a class="headerlink" href="#picking-platforms" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h1>
<p>Whenever you write Open Source Software, you have to make a choice of
what platforms you are going to support.</p>
<p>Generally you want to make your program as portable as possible and
cover as many platforms, distros and weird computers as possible.</p>
<p>But making your program run on everything is hard work very hard work.</p>
<p>For instance, did you know that:</p>
<blockquote>
<div>sizeof(void*) != sizeof(void * const)</div></blockquote>
<p>is legal in a ISO-C compliant environment ?</p>
<p>Varnish <a class="reference external" href="http://hellarvik.com/node/66">runs on a Nokia N900</a>
but I am not going to go out of my way to make sure that is always
the case.</p>
<p>To make sense for Varnish, a platform has to be able to deliver,
both in terms of performance, but also in terms of the APIs we
use to get that performance.</p>
<p>In the FreeBSD project where I grew up, we ended up instituting
platform-tiers, in an effort to document which platforms we
cared about and which we did love quite as much.</p>
<p>If we did the same for Varnish, the result would look something like:</p>
<div class="section" id="a-platforms-we-care-about">
<h2>A - Platforms we care about<a class="headerlink" href="#a-platforms-we-care-about" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>We care about these platforms because our users use them and
because they deliver a lot of bang for the buck with Varnish.</p>
<p>These platforms are in our “tinderbox” tests, we use them ourselves
and they pass all regression tests all the time.
Platform specific bug reports gets acted on.</p>
<p><em>FreeBSD</em></p>
<p><em>Linux</em></p>
<p>Obviously you can forget about running Varnish on your
<a class="reference external" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linksys_WRT54G_series">WRT54G</a>
but if you have a real computer, you can expect Varnish to work
“ok or better” on any distro that has a package available.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="b-platforms-we-try-not-to-break">
<h2>B - Platforms we try not to break<a class="headerlink" href="#b-platforms-we-try-not-to-break" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>We try not to break these platforms, because they basically work,
possibly with some footnotes or minor limitations, and they have
an active userbase.</p>
<p>We may or may not test on these platforms on a regular basis,
or we may rely on contributors to alert us to problems.
Platform specific bug reports without patches will likely live a quiet life.</p>
<p><em>Mac OS/X</em></p>
<p><em>Solaris-decendants</em> (Oracle Solaris, OmniOS, Joyent SmartOS)</p>
<p>Mac OS/X is regarded as a developer platform, not as a production
platform.</p>
<p>Solaris-decendants are regarded as a production platform.</p>
<p>NetBSD, AIX and HP-UX are conceivably candidates for this level, but
so far I have not heard much, if any, user interest.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="c-platforms-we-tolerate">
<h2>C - Platforms we tolerate<a class="headerlink" href="#c-platforms-we-tolerate" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>We tolerate any other platform, as long as the burden of doing
so is proportional to the benefit to the Varnish community.</p>
<p>Do not file bug reports specific to these platforms without attaching
a patch that solves the problem, we will just close it.</p>
<p>For now, anything else goes here, certainly the N900 and the WRT54G.</p>
<p>I’m afraid I have to put OpenBSD here for now, it is seriously
behind on socket APIs and working around those issues is just not
worth the effort.</p>
<p>If people send us a small non-intrusive patches that makes Varnish
run on these platforms, we’ll take it.</p>
<p>If they send us patches that reorganizes everything, hurts code
readability, quality or just generally do not satisfy our taste,
they get told that thanks, but no thanks.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="is-that-it-abandon-all-hope-etc">
<h2>Is that it ? Abandon all hope etc. ?<a class="headerlink" href="#is-that-it-abandon-all-hope-etc" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>These tiers are not static, if for some reason Varnish suddenly
becomes a mandatory accessory to some technically sensible platform,
(zOS anyone ?) that platform will get upgraded. If the pessimists
are right about Oracles intentions, Solaris may get demoted.</p>
<p>Until next time,</p>
<p>Poul-Henning, 2010-08-03
Edited Nils, 2014-03-18 with Poul-Hennings consent</p>
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<h3><a href="../index.html">Table Of Contents</a></h3>
<ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#">Picking platforms</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#a-platforms-we-care-about">A - Platforms we care about</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#b-platforms-we-try-not-to-break">B - Platforms we try not to break</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#c-platforms-we-tolerate">C - Platforms we tolerate</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#is-that-it-abandon-all-hope-etc">Is that it ? Abandon all hope etc. ?</a></li>
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