I have searched in the web about porting several libraries required to build some OSS applications to OpenSolaris / Solaris Express ... stuff like Qt4, VTK, OpenCASCADE, etc...

seems like mission impossible...

This is sad, because Solaris has features that Linux does not have yet... making it a platform of choice for HPC...

like ZFS, Zones, snapshots...

a simple application like this one...

http://www.dhondt.de/cgx_2.2.all.tar.bz2 ... a 3d modeller/ FEA preprocessor, i really tried to build this... no avail...

EDIT:

And besides, I've heard somewhere that binaries compiled with SunStudio are much more efficient using resources than those built with Intel ifort/icpc/icc compilers... even pathscale is no match for SunStudio

since i deal a lot with resource intensive apps, i was considering to port all these apps to a Solaris x86 environment, all them are openSource... the only 4 Commercial closed applications i use run on Solaris aslo... Abaqus, Matlab, Catia and pro Engineer...

On Linux, only pro Engineer runs... Catia does not...

Hi

I am posting from my brand new Solaris 10/9 VM running atop of VirtualBox 4 on Debian Squeeze...

I will try to sort some problems of compiling stuff afte upgrading and installing the susntudio compilers as well as the gcc.

I booted in CDE.... geeesh... Does anybody use that...?!

Logged out and loged again in Java Desktop 3...

Java Desktop 3 is SIMILAR to Gnome, but is different...

They have this AWESOME button called "Launch"

One should always respect buttons with the word "launch" written over...

... when i see in the movies... Cosmic things happen when somebody presses a Launch button...

You should have gotten a dialog at startup stating that CDE is deprecated and by Solaris 11, it will be removed. I rather like the desktop themes in CDE though.

JDS is just glorified GNOME. I must admit the very first time I heard about Java Desktop System, I thought the whole damned DE was written solely in Java. If you didn't know I have a rather negative view of Java in the first place. As far as I know I think also by the next release the JDS name will be dropped and it will just be GNOME. Good thing too, I was never impressed by 'JDS' in the first place.

As for compiling certain OSS under Solaris, running into trouble should be expected since there is no gcc or any libraries that are included in open source systems. Things might be different in OpenSolaris, but that is rather moot since Oracle killed OSOL.

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IMHO Java apps are a PITA when run over JVMs of Linux and Windows... but since them dudes from Sun created java, I thought that running Java over a Sun platform was like watching a dolphin in the ocean...

A dolphin in the street ( Java app over a JVM running on W$ or Linux ) doesn't go much far, now... try to catch it in the water ( Java app running in its native element )...

Moved: This thread is more suitable in Solaris/OpenSolaris and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

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Java is designed to run on all platforms through JVM, there is technically no such thing as a native element in Java. In theory it should run the same way no matter what, but yes thats just theory and in reality a java program runs differently in a Windows JVM vs Linux JVM vs other. In the end as far as I'm concerned it is more trouble than its worth, and if you are a CS/Software engineering major, completely useless even as an introduction to programming.

Java programming is rather convoluted, doesn't necessarily make things any easier and to me it is like learning things ass-backwards, because you are essentially starting off programming in classes, which if you started with C++ classes are at the end of the course.

C and then C++ should still be the way forward, and the fact that those like to say that Java has no pointers therefore it is easier to work in, is a myth. There are ways of calling data that act very much so like pointers, it is just not acknowledged as such.

Yea in case you didn't notice, I don't think too much of Java. It can go to hell and die as far as I'm concerned.

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I Understand... but "Javiotic's" main stronghold is portability... Ok, Ok, i know, python is portable also, but does it have stuff like AWT, or SWING...?

I'm sure it has something 'equivalent' perhaps I don't know. I haven't kept up with Python.

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Back to the subject ...
Because these applications code is not (enough) portable but designed and developed on Gnu/Linux based OSes which are now the de-facto Open Source standard development platforms.

Despite Solaris trend to bundle more and more Gnu and FOSS libraries and applications, that doesn't make it a Gnu/Linux OS. I suspect you'll find the same kind of issues while building these software on other commercial Unix like AIX and HP-UX.

A couple of decades ago, there was an effort to standardize APIs and developers were perhaps more careful in following API standards, especially as there was much more diversity in Unix distributions. Nowadays, the mainstream Unix like core OS used by Open Source developers is undoubtedly Gnu/Linux so most of them do not care about anything else, sometimes deliberately but more often by lack of time or interest. Porting is then left "as an exercise for the reader" which can prove difficult as you are experiencing.

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I see...

Solaris 11 Express has been released 4 month ago or so. It has dropped the whole JDS thing to a more standard Gnome desktop with the Nimbus theme. By the way, there was almost nothing Java based in JDS, that was mostly a marketing thing.
Solaris 10 definitely bundles gcc. (/usr/sfw/bin/gcc)
This is exaggerated, there is a significant number of OSS application and libraries with Solaris 10, and more with OpenSolaris/Solaris 11 Express.
I would rather say renamed and relicensed ...