Compatibility with POSIX OSes

Until recently VCS has only been tested on Linux which, whith the GNU toolset, differs considerably from other UNIX-like OSes. These are some notes on the compatibility status.

The first and main target for compatibility is FreeBSD

POSIX

FreeBSD

Experimental compatibility introduced in 1.0.100a.

Compatibility modifications (from the Full changelog):

  • Call bash through env ⇔ bash is not always in /bin/bash
  • Ensure we're using the correct getopt version
  • (1.0.100a) Try to use POSIX sed options when appropriate
    • (1.11) Use awk for complex regexes
  • Replaced incompatible sed constructs
  • Use mktemp's common GNU/BSD(/POSIX?) syntax
  • (1.0.100a) Use jot instead of seq if required and available
    • (1.11) Replaced by awk

vcs works on FreeBSD 7.1-RELEASE but the output is still less refined than on Linux. See http://outlyer.net/2009-03-25:vcs-working-on-freebsd/.
The output on FreeBSD 8.0 matches the one on Linux so it might be some (minor) problem with ImageMagick's arguments.

Notes/References

All dates/times in this page are UTC.