Frequently Questioned Questions

APE — The ANSI/POSIX Environment

What is the future of APE? Are we interested in accepting major improvements to it or is it something that we should strive to eliminate from base system in the future?

As of now 9front has some major dependencies on APE-based software, namely: gs(1), ape/patch(1), various troff(1) related utilities, audio codecs, and a whole bucket of external software.

Most of these appear to be on a path to be replaced by native alternatives: Sigrid’s pdffs(1), Ori’s patch(1), and so on.

Sigrid’s Native Porting Environment seems like a good alternative.

After APE dependencies in the base system are minimized or eliminated entirely it seems to follow that APE shall be removed.

I (kvik) am in favor of this option. APE living its own life seems preferable from letting it rot behind bars maintained by philosophic objections of some contributors.