Re: History of poll() API (was: Python recompile)

In article <FkYzP.991250$t84d.604699@fx11.iad>,
Scott Lurndal <slp53@pacbell.net> wrote:

Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> writes:

Original Winsock2 does not provide poll(). poll() (WSAPoll) didn't
become available on Windows until much later (IIRC, Vista, i.e. 13-14
years after original Winsock2 API specification).
I didn't find exact accounts in Wikipedia, but it seems that Winsock2
API is based on BSD4.3, probably with contributions from SunOS 4.
Is poll() available in BSD4.3 and/or in SunOS 4?

>
poll() came from system V.
>
While it is part of FreeBSD, I'm not sure when it was added to the
original BSD distribution.  It wasn't part of BSD2.

Looks like it came into FreeBSD in 1997, by way of an
implementation in NetBSD.  I thought perhaps it came via the
iBCS2 emulation, but that does not appear to be the case.

In the NetBSD tree, mycroft codified and exposed it in 1996.  A
glance at the change suggests it was merging SysV interface and
the SunOS version, presumably these existed for binary
compatability with iBCS2 on i386 and SunOS on SPARC,
respectively.

I don't know when SunOS got it.  I assume they picked it up from
System V.

System V originally developed their own network interface (based on
streams in SVR4) but later adopted the bsd socket interface.

Looks like it dates from SVR3.  It's not in Bach, but that's
mostly SVR2.

- Dan C.