Jump to content

POSIX

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected fromPOSIX.1)
Not to be confused withUnix,Unix-like,orLinux.

Portable Operating System Interface (IEEE 1003)
AbbreviationPOSIX
StatusPublished
Year started1988;36 years ago(1988)
Latest versionIEEE Std 1003.1-2024
2024;0 years ago(2024)
OrganizationAustin Group(IEEE Computer Society,The Open Group,ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 22/WG 15)
Related standardsISO/IEC9945
DomainApplication programming interfaces
Websiteposix.opengroup.org

ThePortable Operating System Interface(POSIX;IPA:/ˈpɒz.ɪks/[1]) is a family ofstandardsspecified by theIEEE Computer Societyfor maintaining compatibility betweenoperating systems.[1]POSIX defines both the system and user-levelapplication programming interfaces(APIs), along with command lineshellsand utility interfaces, for software compatibility (portability) with variants ofUnixand other operating systems.[1][2]POSIX is also atrademarkof the IEEE.[1]POSIX is intended to be used by both application and system developers.[3]

Name[edit]

Originally, the name "POSIX" referred to IEEE Std 1003.1-1988, released in 1988. The family of POSIX standards is formally designated asIEEE 1003and the ISO/IEC standard number isISO/IEC9945.

The standards emerged from a project that began in 1984 building on work from related activity in the/usr/groupassociation.[4]Richard Stallmansuggested the namePOSIXto the IEEE[5]instead of the formerIEEE-IX.[6]|The committee found it more easily pronounceable and memorable, and thus adopted it.[citation needed]

Overview[edit]

Unixwas selected as the basis for a standard system interface partly because it was "manufacturer-neutral". However, several major versions of Unix existed—so there was a need to develop a common-denominator system. The POSIX specifications forUnix-likeoperating systems originally consisted of a single document for the coreprogramming interface,but eventually grew to 19 separate documents (POSIX.1, POSIX.2, etc.).[7]The standardized usercommand lineandscripting interfacewere based on theUNIX System Vshell.[8]Many user-level programs, services, and utilities (includingawk,echo,ed) were also standardized, along with required program-level services (including basicI/O:file,terminal,andnetwork). POSIX also defines a standardthreadinglibrary API which is supported by most modern operating systems. In 2008, most parts of POSIX were combined into a single standard(IEEE Std 1003.1-2008,also known asPOSIX.1-2008).

As of 2014,POSIX documentation is divided into two parts:

  • POSIX.1, 2013 Edition: POSIX Base Definitions, System Interfaces, and Commands and Utilities (which include POSIX.1, extensions for POSIX.1, Real-time Services, Threads Interface, Real-time Extensions, Security Interface, Network File Access and Network Process-to-Process Communications, User Portability Extensions, Corrections and Extensions, Protection and Control Utilities and Batch System Utilities. This is POSIX 1003.1-2008 with Technical Corrigendum 1.)
  • POSIX Conformance Testing: A test suite for POSIX accompanies the standard:VSX-PCTSor theVSX POSIX Conformance Test Suite.[9]

The development of the POSIX standard takes place in theAustin Group(a jointworking groupamong the IEEE,The Open Group,and theISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 22/WG 15).

Versions[edit]

Parts before 1997[edit]

Before 1997, POSIX comprised several standards:

Versions after 1997[edit]

After 1997, theAustin Groupdeveloped the POSIX revisions. The specifications are known under the nameSingle UNIX Specification,before they become a POSIX standard when formally approved by the ISO.

POSIX.1-2001 (with two TCs)[edit]

POSIX.1-2001(or IEEE Std 1003.1-2001) equates to theSingle UNIX Specification, version 3minusX/Open Curses.[11]

This standard consisted of:

  • the Base Definitions, Issue 6,
  • the System Interfaces and Headers, Issue 6,
  • the Commands and Utilities, Issue 6.

IEEE Std 1003.1-2004 involved a minor update of POSIX.1-2001. It incorporated two minor updates orerratareferred to asTechnical Corrigenda(TCs).[12]Its contents are available on the web.[13]

POSIX.1-2008 (with two TCs)[edit]

Base Specifications, Issue 7(orIEEE Std 1003.1-2008,2016 Edition) is similar to the current 2017 version (as of 22 July 2018).[14][15]

This standard consists of:

  • the Base Definitions, Issue 7,
  • the System Interfaces and Headers, Issue 7,
  • the Commands and Utilities, Issue 7,
  • the Rationale volume.

POSIX.1-2017[edit]

IEEE Std 1003.1-2017 (Revision of IEEE Std 1003.1-2008) - IEEE Standard for Information Technology—Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX(R)) Base Specifications, Issue 7 is available from either The Open Group or IEEE. It is technically identical to POSIX.1-2008 with Technical Corrigenda 1 and 2 applied. A free online copy may still be available.[14]

POSIX.1-2024[edit]

IEEE Std 1003.1-2024 - IEEE Standard for Information Technology—Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX(R)) Base Specifications, Issue 8 was published on 14 June 2024.[15]

Controversies[edit]

512- vs 1024-byte blocks[edit]

POSIX mandates 512-byte defaultblocksizes for thedfandduutilities, reflecting the typical size of blocks on disks. WhenRichard Stallmanand theGNUteam were implementing POSIX for theGNU operating system,they objected to this on the grounds that most people think in terms of 1024 byte (or 1KiB) blocks. The environment variablePOSIX_ME_HARDERwas introduced to allow the user to force the standards-compliant behaviour.[16]The variable name was later changed toPOSIXLY_CORRECT.[17]This variable is now also used for a number of other behaviour quirks.

POSIX-oriented operating systems[edit]

Depending upon the degree of compliance with the standards, one can classify operating systems as fully or partly POSIX compatible.

POSIX-certified[edit]

Current versions of the following operating systems have been certified to conform to one or more of the various POSIX standards. This means that they passed the automated conformance tests[18]and their certification has not expired and the operating system has not been discontinued.[19][20]

Formerly POSIX-certified[edit]

Some versions of the following operating systems had been certified to conform to one or more of the various POSIX standards. This means that they passed the automated conformance tests. The certification has expired and some of the operating systems have been discontinued.[19]

Mostly POSIX-compliant[edit]

The following are not certified as POSIX compliant yet comply in large part:

POSIX for Microsoft Windows[edit]

  • Cygwinprovides a largely POSIX-compliant development and run-time environment forMicrosoft Windows.
  • MinGW,aforkof Cygwin, provides a less POSIX-compliant development environment and supports compatibleC-programmed applications viaMsvcrt,Microsoft's old Visual Cruntime library.
  • libunistd, a largely POSIX-compliant development library originally created to build the Linux-based C/C++source code ofCinePaintas is inMicrosoft Visual Studio.A lightweight implementation that has POSIX-compatible header files that map POSIX APIs to call their Windows API counterparts.[43]
  • Microsoft POSIX subsystem,an optional Windows subsystem included in Windows NT-based operating systems up to Windows 2000. It supported POSIX.1 as it stood in the 1990 revision, withoutthreadsorsockets.
  • Interix,originally OpenNT by Softway Systems, Inc., is an upgrade and replacement forMicrosoft POSIX subsystemthat was purchased byMicrosoftin 1999. It was initially marketed as a stand-alone add-on product and then later included as a component inWindows Services for UNIX(SFU) and finally incorporated as a component inWindows Server 2003 R2and later Windows OS releases under the name "Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications" (SUA); later made deprecated in 2012 (Windows 8)[44]and dropped in 2013 (2012 R2, 8.1). It enables full POSIX compliance for certainMicrosoft Windowsproducts.[citation needed]
  • Windows Subsystem for Linux,also known as WSL, is a compatibility layer for running Linux binary executables natively on Windows 10 and 11 using a Linux image such as Ubuntu, Debian, or OpenSUSE among others, acting as an upgrade and replacement for Windows Services for UNIX. It was released in beta in April 2016. The first distribution available was Ubuntu.
  • UWINfrom AT&T Research implements a POSIX layer on top of the Win32 APIs.
  • MKS Toolkit,originally created for MS-DOS, is a software package produced and maintained byMKS Inc.that provides aUnix-likeenvironment for scripting, connectivity and portingUnixandLinuxsoftware to both 32- and 64-bitMicrosoft Windowssystems. A subset of it was included in the first release ofWindows Services for UNIX(SFU) in 1998.[45][46]
  • Windows C Runtime LibraryandWindows Sockets APIimplement commonly used POSIX API functions for file, time, environment, and socket access,[47]although the support remains largely incomplete and not fully interoperable with POSIX-compliant implementations.[48][49][discuss]

POSIX for OS/2[edit]

Mostly POSIX compliant environments forOS/2:

POSIX for DOS[edit]

Partially POSIX compliant environments forDOSinclude:

  • emx+gcc– largely POSIX compliant
  • DJGPP– partially POSIX compliant
  • DR-DOSmultitasking core viaEMM386/MULTI– a POSIX threads frontend API extension is available

Compliant via compatibility layer[edit]

The following are not officially certified as POSIX compatible, but they conform in large part to the standards by implementing POSIX support via some sort of compatibility feature (usually translation libraries, or a layer atop the kernel). Without these features, they are usually non-compliant.

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^abcd"POSIX.1 FAQ".The Open Group. 13 June 2020.Retrieved20 February2023.
  2. ^"P1003.1 - Standard for Information Technology--Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX(TM)) Base Specifications, Issue 8".IEEE Standards Association.
  3. ^"Introduction".The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7, 2018 edition.Retrieved22 July2021.
  4. ^"JimIsaak - POSIX Impact".sites.google.Retrieved15 September2022.
  5. ^"A Backgrounder on IEEE Std 1003.1".Footnotes.
  6. ^Stoughton, Nicholas."An Update On Standards".;login:.
  7. ^PASC Status (including POSIX)(Report).IEEE Computer Society.4 December 2003.Retrieved1 March2015.
  8. ^"Shell Command Language - The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7, 2013 Edition".Retrieved28 April2020.
  9. ^"Test Suites VSX-PCTS2003".The Open Group.
  10. ^ "librt(3LIB)".docs.oracle.man pages section 3: Library Interfaces and Headers. Oracle Corporation. 4 August 1998.Retrieved18 February2016.librt, libposix4- POSIX.1b Realtime Extensions library [...] librt is the preferred name for this library. The name libposix4 is maintained for backward compatibility and should be avoided. Functions in this library provide most of the interfaces specified by the POSIX.1b Realtime Extension.
  11. ^"The Single UNIX Specification Version 3 - Overview".unix.org.
  12. ^"IEEE Std 1003.1"(2004 ed.). Unix.org.Retrieved26 July2009.
  13. ^"IEEE Std 1003.1"(2004 ed.). The Open Group..
  14. ^ab"Base Specifications, Issue 7, 2018 Edition".The Open Group.Retrieved1 May2024.
  15. ^ab"The Austin Common Standards Revision Group".The Open Group.Retrieved14 June2024.
  16. ^Stallman, Richard (28 August 1991)."Democracy Triumphs in Disk Units".Newsgroup:gnu.announce.Usenet:[email protected]– via Google Groups.
  17. ^"GNU Coding Standards".GNU.
  18. ^"POSIX Certified by IEEE and The Open Group - Program Guide".Section 2, How to Achieve Certification.Retrieved22 January2022.
  19. ^ab"POSIX Certified by IEEE and The Open Group - Program Guide".Section 4, Renewals and Certified Product Updates.Retrieved22 January2022.
  20. ^"Certified Products by Company".The Open Group. n.d.Retrieved22 January2022.
  21. ^ab"IBM".The Open Group.Retrieved23 January2022.
  22. ^"Hewlett-Packard".The Open Group.Retrieved26 January2014.
  23. ^ab"POSIX Certification Register".get.posixcertified.ieee.org.Retrieved23 January2022.
  24. ^"The Open Brand - Register of Certified Products".Register of Open Branded Products.The Open Group.Retrieved20 May2015.
  25. ^"Apple Inc".Register of Open Branded Products.The Open Group.Retrieved20 May2015.
  26. ^"SCO OpenServer Release 5".The Open Group. 3 May 1995.Retrieved24 December2021.
  27. ^"UnixWare ® 7.1.3 and later".The Open Group. 16 May 2003.Retrieved24 December2021.
  28. ^"Huawei Technology Co., Ltd".The Open Group.Retrieved26 May2017.
  29. ^"Inspur Co., Ltd".The Open Group.Retrieved26 May2017.
  30. ^"Silicon Graphics, Inc".The Open Group.Retrieved26 January2014.
  31. ^"The Open Brand - Register of Certified Products".Open Group.23 July 2003. Archived fromthe originalon 2 August 2003.Retrieved23 January2022.
  32. ^"QNX Achieves New POSIX Certification"(Press release). QNX. 8 April 2008.Retrieved16 January2016.
  33. ^"Oracle Corporation".The Open Group. Archived fromthe originalon 12 July 2017.Retrieved26 January2014.
  34. ^"Hewlett-Packard".The Open Group. Archived fromthe originalon 9 July 2014.Retrieved26 January2014.
  35. ^"Huawei LiteOS / LiteOS".Gitee.Huawei.Retrieved23 May2024.
  36. ^Schweikhardt, Jens."FreeBSD POSIX 2001 Utility Compliance".FreeBSD.
  37. ^Mark Halper (7 November 1994)."HP 3000 sales catch market by surprise".Computerworld.Vol. 28, no. 4. IDG Enterprise.
  38. ^Solter, Nicholas A.; Jelinek, Jerry; Miner, David (21 March 2011).OpenSolaris Bible.John Wiley & Sons.ISBN9781118080313.
  39. ^Lamie, Bill; Taubinger, Rafael (15 June 2023)."RTOS with standard POSIX pthreads API: a complement to embedded Linux".Embedded.Retrieved13 September2023.
  40. ^"OpenVOS POSIX.1: Conformance Guide".Status Technologies.Retrieved26 November2021.
  41. ^ULTRIX POSIX Conformance Document(PDF).Digital. June 1990.Retrieved13 December2021.
  42. ^"POSIX Support".Zephyr documentation.Retrieved7 March2023.
  43. ^Rowe, Robin (8 September 2022)."libunistd".Github.Retrieved18 February2023.If you want to build single codebase C++ code to run on Windows, Linux and MacOS, you need this for Windows
  44. ^"Features Removed or Deprecated in Windows Server 2012".Microsoft Docs.31 August 2016.
  45. ^"Windows NT Services for UNIX Add-On Pack".Microsoft.Archived fromthe originalon 8 May 1999.
  46. ^"MKS Solves Enterprise Interoperability Challenges"(Press release). Archived fromthe originalon 28 April 1999.
  47. ^"Deprecated CRT Functions".Microsoft Docs.15 October 2009.Retrieved23 July2022.
  48. ^"Porting Socket Applications to Winsock".Microsoft Docs.7 January 2021.Retrieved23 July2022.
  49. ^"Winsock Programmer's FAQ Articles: BSD Sockets Compatibility".Warren Young. 31 August 2015.Retrieved8 October2015.
  50. ^"Aminet - dev/C/Vbcc_PosixLib.lha".
  51. ^"Programming IBM PASE for i"(PDF).ibm.IBM. 2013.Retrieved25 November2021.
  52. ^"FIPS 151-2 Conformance Validated Products List".Perennial Test Lab.Retrieved14 August2022.
  53. ^"APE — ANSI/POSIX Environment".Plan 9 documents.Bell Labs. Archived fromthe originalon 1 June 2017.
  54. ^Realtime Products Technical Summary, Fifth Edition(PDF).Digital Equipment Corporation.December 1992.Retrieved8 December2021.
  55. ^"Chapter 29 - POSIX Compatibility".MS Windows NT Workstation Resource Kit.Microsoft. Archived fromthe originalon 15 January 2008.

External links[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related toPOSIX.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=POSIX&oldid=1235108531"