Heirloom Project
Encyclopedia
The Heirloom Project is a collection of traditional Unix
utilities. Most of them are derived from
original Unix
source code, as released as Open Source
by Caldera
and Sun
.
The project has the following components:
Although in general the intention of the project is to provide versions of Unix programs whose behavior mimics that of the classic versions, some improvements have been made. In particular, many of the Heirloom programs have been adapted to handle UTF-8
Unicode
. Most programs have both a classic version and a POSIX
conformant variant.
The Heirloom Project is a collection of traditional Unix
utilities. Most of them are derived from
original Unix
source code, as released as Open Source
by Caldera
and Sun
.
The project has the following components:
Although in general the intention of the project is to provide versions of Unix programs whose behavior mimics that of the classic versions, some improvements have been made. In particular, many of the Heirloom programs have been adapted to handle UTF-8
Unicode
. Most programs have both a classic version and a POSIX
conformant variant.
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
utilities. Most of them are derived from
original Unix
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
source code, as released as Open Source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
by Caldera
SCO Group
TSG Group, Inc. is a software company formerly called The SCO Group, Caldera Systems, and Caldera International. After acquiring the Santa Cruz Operation's Server Software and Services divisions, as well as UnixWare and OpenServer technologies, the company changed its focus to UNIX...
and Sun
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
.
The project has the following components:
- The Heirloom Toolchest: awk, cpioCpiocpio is a general file archiver utility and its associated file format. It is primarily installed on Unix-like computer operating systems. The software utility was originally intended as a tape archiving program as part of the Programmer's Workbench , and has been a component of virtually every...
, grepGrepgrep is a command-line text-search utility originally written for Unix. The name comes from the ed command g/re/p...
, tarTar (file format)In computing, tar is both a file format and the name of a program used to handle such files...
, etc. - The Heirloom Bourne Shell shBourne shellThe Bourne shell, or sh, was the default Unix shell of Unix Version 7 and most Unix-like systems continue to have /bin/sh - which will be the Bourne shell, or a symbolic link or hard link to a compatible shell - even when more modern shells are used by most users.Developed by Stephen Bourne at AT&T...
- The Heirloom Documentation Tools: nroffNroffnroff is a Unix text-formatting program; it produces output suitable for simple fixed-width printers and terminal windows...
, troffTrofftroff is a document processing system developed by AT&T for the Unix operating system.-History:troff can trace its origins back to a text formatting program called RUNOFF, written by Jerome H. Saltzer for MIT's CTSS operating system in the mid-1960s...
, dpost, etc. - The Heirloom Development Tools: lex, yaccYaccThe computer program yacc is a parser generator developed by Stephen C. Johnson at AT&T for the Unix operating system. The name is an acronym for "Yet Another Compiler Compiler." It generates a parser based on an analytic grammar written in a notation similar to BNF.Yacc used to be available as...
, m4M4 (computer language)m4 is a general purpose macro processor designed by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie. m4 is an extension of an earlier macro processor m3, written by Ritchie for the AP-3 minicomputer.-Use:...
, and SCCSSource Code Control SystemSource Code Control System is an early revision control system, geared toward program source code and other text files. It was originally developed in SNOBOL at Bell Labs in 1972 by Marc J. Rochkind for an IBM System/370 computer running OS/360 MVT... - Heirloom mailxMailxmailx is a Unix utility program for sending and receiving mail, also known as a Mail User Agent program. It is an improved version of the mail utility.mailx is a lightweight console application mail program which has a command syntax similar to ed....
- The Heirloom Packaging Tools: pkgadd, pkgmk, etc.
Although in general the intention of the project is to provide versions of Unix programs whose behavior mimics that of the classic versions, some improvements have been made. In particular, many of the Heirloom programs have been adapted to handle UTF-8
UTF-8
UTF-8 is a multibyte character encoding for Unicode. Like UTF-16 and UTF-32, UTF-8 can represent every character in the Unicode character set. Unlike them, it is backward-compatible with ASCII and avoids the complications of endianness and byte order marks...
Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
. Most programs have both a classic version and a POSIX
POSIX
POSIX , an acronym for "Portable Operating System Interface", is a family of standards specified by the IEEE for maintaining compatibility between operating systems...
conformant variant.
External links
- Official website
- Freshmeat entry
- Mac OS X port
- Retrocomputing Museum entry
- GNU Autoconf manual reference
- Debian Heirloom mailx package
The Heirloom Project is a collection of traditional Unix
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
utilities. Most of them are derived from
original Unix
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
source code, as released as Open Source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
by Caldera
SCO Group
TSG Group, Inc. is a software company formerly called The SCO Group, Caldera Systems, and Caldera International. After acquiring the Santa Cruz Operation's Server Software and Services divisions, as well as UnixWare and OpenServer technologies, the company changed its focus to UNIX...
and Sun
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
.
The project has the following components:
- The Heirloom Toolchest: awk, cpioCpiocpio is a general file archiver utility and its associated file format. It is primarily installed on Unix-like computer operating systems. The software utility was originally intended as a tape archiving program as part of the Programmer's Workbench , and has been a component of virtually every...
, grepGrepgrep is a command-line text-search utility originally written for Unix. The name comes from the ed command g/re/p...
, tarTar (file format)In computing, tar is both a file format and the name of a program used to handle such files...
, etc. - The Heirloom Bourne Shell shBourne shellThe Bourne shell, or sh, was the default Unix shell of Unix Version 7 and most Unix-like systems continue to have /bin/sh - which will be the Bourne shell, or a symbolic link or hard link to a compatible shell - even when more modern shells are used by most users.Developed by Stephen Bourne at AT&T...
- The Heirloom Documentation Tools: nroffNroffnroff is a Unix text-formatting program; it produces output suitable for simple fixed-width printers and terminal windows...
, troffTrofftroff is a document processing system developed by AT&T for the Unix operating system.-History:troff can trace its origins back to a text formatting program called RUNOFF, written by Jerome H. Saltzer for MIT's CTSS operating system in the mid-1960s...
, dpost, etc. - The Heirloom Development Tools: lex, yaccYaccThe computer program yacc is a parser generator developed by Stephen C. Johnson at AT&T for the Unix operating system. The name is an acronym for "Yet Another Compiler Compiler." It generates a parser based on an analytic grammar written in a notation similar to BNF.Yacc used to be available as...
, m4M4 (computer language)m4 is a general purpose macro processor designed by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie. m4 is an extension of an earlier macro processor m3, written by Ritchie for the AP-3 minicomputer.-Use:...
, and SCCSSource Code Control SystemSource Code Control System is an early revision control system, geared toward program source code and other text files. It was originally developed in SNOBOL at Bell Labs in 1972 by Marc J. Rochkind for an IBM System/370 computer running OS/360 MVT... - Heirloom mailxMailxmailx is a Unix utility program for sending and receiving mail, also known as a Mail User Agent program. It is an improved version of the mail utility.mailx is a lightweight console application mail program which has a command syntax similar to ed....
- The Heirloom Packaging Tools: pkgadd, pkgmk, etc.
Although in general the intention of the project is to provide versions of Unix programs whose behavior mimics that of the classic versions, some improvements have been made. In particular, many of the Heirloom programs have been adapted to handle UTF-8
UTF-8
UTF-8 is a multibyte character encoding for Unicode. Like UTF-16 and UTF-32, UTF-8 can represent every character in the Unicode character set. Unlike them, it is backward-compatible with ASCII and avoids the complications of endianness and byte order marks...
Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
. Most programs have both a classic version and a POSIX
POSIX
POSIX , an acronym for "Portable Operating System Interface", is a family of standards specified by the IEEE for maintaining compatibility between operating systems...
conformant variant.