Date: Sat, 29 Apr 2000 18:43:54 -0400 (EDT) From: Andrew Gallatin <gallatin@cs.duke.edu> To: "Andrew M. Miklic" <miklic@ibm.net> Cc: freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD-CURRENT for Alpha? Message-ID: <14603.24019.125566.500784@grasshopper.cs.duke.edu> In-Reply-To: <390B6C60.CC37A26E@ibm.net> References: <390B6C60.CC37A26E@ibm.net>
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Andrew M. Miklic writes: > Anyone, > > I am a machdep kernel developer at HP, and I was hoping to play around a > little with the current Alpha code and hopefully contribute to it, but Cool! > although I can find a 5.0-CURRENT for i386 (no active 4.x-CURRENT for > i386 that I can find), I am unable to find either an active 4.x-CURRENT > or an active 5.0-CURRENT branch for Alpha--is there an active -CURRENT > tree for Alpha? If so, could someone tell we what it is and where I can > find it? I assure you that the code is all there ;-) I assume you're talking about snapshots? I'd suggest installing 4.0-RELEASE and building your way to the most recent -CURRENT or -STABLE. > Also, is there going to be a 4.1 release, or are we just jumping > straight to 5.0? The 4.x (or RELENG_4) branch has the -STABLE tag now. -CURRENT is the 5.x branch. There will be a 4.1 release in a few months time which will consist of enhancements and bug fixes merged from 5.0-CURRENT. There will be 5.0 snapshots (but not releases) at irregular intervals, before and and after 4.1-RELEASE. Much later (perhaps after more releases in the 4.x series) there will be a 5.0-RELEASE. These questions can mostly be answered by reading the FreeBSD handbook. Start at http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/cutting-edge.html > Finally, if I want to contribute to the Alpha port, how do I go about > doing it (e.g., what sorts of things do people want/need done; if I make > changes/improvements to something, whom do I give them; etc.)... > > Andrew Miklic Well, what sort of thing are you interested in? There's plenty to be done. Here are some fairly challenging tasks off the top of my head that I don't think anybody is actively pursuing: - booting machines with the only AlphaBios (PC164UX, the XL series, UP1000, etc) - debugging Xfree86 (causes machine checks with some combination of servers, cards & alphas) - enhancing the osf/1 compat code to run threaded binaries. This could be nearly impossible if you're not familiar with mach calls, but if you're a kernel developer at HP.. Some more mundane tasks include: - creating an alpha LINT kernel config file - making src/tools/tools/kerninclude work on alpha - making my ipobe driver into a proper FreeBSD port - fixing device drivers to work on the alpha (eg, usb) I'm sure there's more to do than I can think of right now. As to how to contribute the code, the preferable mechansim is to use send-pr to submit a problem report with a patch. Send-pr is the only mechanism where you can be certain your work won't get lost. Other options include contacting developers directly (eg, the maintainer of the code you're fixing, look in the CVS logs to figure this out) or mailing to this mailing list. Cheers, Drew ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Andrew Gallatin, Sr Systems Programmer http://www.cs.duke.edu/~gallatin Duke University Email: gallatin@cs.duke.edu Department of Computer Science Phone: (919) 660-6590 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-alpha" in the body of the message
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