[Radiance-general] Mac OSX, xgrid and RADIANCE

[Georg Mischler]

Greg Ward wrote:
>
> Historically, there haven't been any problems with NFS or the lock
> manager under OS X (or any BSD-derivative).  It's only Linux that's
> been finicky on that count.  Arguably, we should really replace the
> NFS lock manager with something more reliable, and we've gone back
> and forth on how to do that, but I keep hoping the problem will go
> away.

It won't go away.

Theoretically (but not very realistically), file locking within
one system family (eg. unixoids) might eventually become based on
a reliable standard that is implemented correctly everywhere.
But all bets are off once we mix system families. At the moment
the relevant candidates are unix and Windows systems.

In this situation, I think the final conclusion must be that only
lockfiles will give us reliable and portable protection.
And since Windows systems *will* become our most popular front-end
as soon as we support them, such a lock file solution is a
necessary part of porting Radiance.


-schorsch

-- 
Georg Mischler  --  simulations developer  --  schorsch at schorsch com
+schorsch.com+  --  lighting design tools  --  http://www.schorsch.com/