Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 02:12:16 -0400 From: "Gary Palmer" <gpalmer@FreeBSD.ORG> To: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> Cc: HARDWARE@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: isa bus and boca multiport boards Message-ID: <10600.864281536@orion.webspan.net> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 21 May 1997 23:19:27 MDT." <3.0.1.32.19970521231927.006a1a5c@lariat.org>
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Brett Glass wrote in message ID <3.0.1.32.19970521231927.006a1a5c@lariat.org>: > >the 8250 family UARTS, and macrocells compatible with them, are used > >on a staggering array of computing hardware. Look at the Alpha > >platforms that are a hot FreeBSD port target for example. > In which case, they can stick with the C version -- or, if they need > performance, do a tuned ASM version for that processor. Please, no. I think the last thing a lot of people would want to see is 5 different versions of sio.S, one for each platform we (in the future) support. Generic drivers which are applicable to multiple platforms should stay as generic as possible. If that means sticking in C, so be it. Machine machine dependant versions just will cause hassle down the road. Example which is still fresh in peoples memories: Garrett's change to the networking code which broke some protocol families. All it takes is Bruce (for example) to do a re-write of part of the tty driver, and slightly change the interface presented, et voila, the build for multiple platforms falls over. I DO NOT expect developers to learn the assembler of every platform we support!! It's why so much of the kernel is in C when it could very easily be optimized into assembler. The advantages of keeping the code in C are clear. I, for one, do not want to see our move to multiple architecture support to a nightmare. Some common sense now about what can and cannot be done reasonably will save a lot of hassle later. Gary -- Gary Palmer FreeBSD Core Team Member FreeBSD: Turning PC's into workstations. See http://www.FreeBSD.ORG/ for info
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