Did UNIX 7 have dependencies?
 

Seventh version, the original one. Did it have "GNU/Linux-like" dependencies?

That would depend on what the heck "Unix 7" is. Do you mean UnixWare 7?

The answer is likely that there were almost certainly "dependencies" but that such dependencies may not have been labeled that way. (For example many package management systems have "prerequisites".) Also most commercial UNIX products are sold as an overall package so the dependencies are installed with the base OS on the expectation you'll be using something somewhat monolithic. Many have package updates that do have "dependencies" on other package updates being in place but again may not call them that (e.g. they might call them "corequisites").

I have not the pleasure of understanding you. To the extent that anything uses libraries it has dependencies.

In the early days things were much different. I've seen a system from 1974 - no dns, but /etc/hosts held the entire internet. It was a 200k file. How things have changed. In 1974 they had libs, and a libc which was needed for any output.

Windows is like that, right?

It is both legally and technically impossible. Unix version 7 was a proprietary OS released in 1979 which predates any FSF software. Gnu code started to be developed in 1984.

But perhaps did I misunderstand your question ...

Yes. It too releases updates for various items it contains. Some of these are one offs to fix specific bugs or security issues. For XP they also created "Service Packs" that had a plethora of changes so you might be running XP SP1, XP SP2 or XP SP3. Of course Windows is NOT *nix variant - except that old AT&Ters [AT&T originated UNIX] I knew used to say MSDOS stood for:
M icrosoft
S tole our
D amn
O perating
S ystem
And windows is based on DOS. :D

Hi -

Unix 7 (circa 1979) did *not* support shared libraries:

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/unix-faq/faq/part6/

Here's a good history of Unix:
http://www.unix.org/what_is_unix/history_timeline.html

So "GNU/Linux-like dependencies" just means "shared libs" ?

"GNU/Linux-like dependencies" means that package A depends on package B and can't work without it. Can you call it "libraries" - I don't know...

By the way, when some Windows app requires Framework or DirectX - is it a dependency like GNU has? Like some app needs qt or gtk?

Okay, so the answer would be no as there was not yet any notion of software packaging (i.e. standardized way to bundle software including metadata) when version 7 was used. The common way to send software was to use tarballs (tar was precisely introduced with Unix v7) and possibly "shar" files, but maybe that was created later. Dependencies aren't necessarily libraries, they can be anything required for a piece of software to work. With Unix v7, as already stated, there was no shared libraries either so software was always linked with the required libraries.

The best example of an operating system with arbitrary, difficult to manage "dependencies" is, of course, MS Windows.

As in "DLL Hell":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DLL_hell

Only very loosely anymore. The days of true DOS-based Windows pretty much ended when Windows 2000/XP came around. Everything is NT-based now, and NT is a different system from DOS entirely. For example, Win 3.1/95 used cooperative multitasking (i.e. non-preemptive; programs had to free resources on their own. This is why the whole system locked up when one program crashed), as DOS didn't support *real* multitasking at the time. Win NT 3.1 and up use the NT kernel, which has preemptive multitasking and memory protection (i.e. programs can't write into/access other programs' memory, etc.).

...Linux (and other UNIX-likes) on the other hand have always had real multitasking. :D

Maybe but you still don't have any real control over things until you drop to CMD prompt and that looks very much like the old DOS window.

However, when I said "based on" I meant it started there. Even a UNIX fan boy like me would never say that even XP was as bad as say Windows 95 let alone something like Windows 2. I remember back when I still did a lot of work on DOS I inherited a system that had Windows 2 loaded on top of DOS (the way it was done in those days). After tinkering with it for about an hour I modified the autoexec.bat to prevent it from loading "that useless Windows stuff". It wasn't until I joined a company that was using 3.11 on desktops that I started using Windows with any regularity. Even then it was mainly to launch Exceed to get to my lovely UNIX systems.