From owner-freebsd-current Mon Apr 24 8:31:49 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from peach.ocn.ne.jp (peach.ocn.ne.jp [210.145.254.87]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1AFE037B596 for ; Mon, 24 Apr 2000 08:31:46 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dcs@newsguy.com) Received: from newsguy.com (p10-dn02kiryunisiki.gunma.ocn.ne.jp [211.0.245.75]) by peach.ocn.ne.jp (8.9.1a/OCN/) with ESMTP id AAA20131; Tue, 25 Apr 2000 00:31:32 +0900 (JST) Message-ID: <3904693F.ED9C5FA6@newsguy.com> Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2000 00:33:19 +0900 From: "Daniel C. Sobral" X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en] (Win98; I) X-Accept-Language: en,pt-BR,ja MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Alok Dhir Cc: "'Richard Wackerbarth'" , "'Matthew Dillon'" , "'freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG'" Subject: Re: SMP changes and breaking kld object module compatibility References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Alok Dhir wrote: > > SMP is a significant area of weakness for 4.0 and begs for improvement. I > for one am thrilled at the progress Matt's made in this area and am itching > to incorporate the changes into my 4.0 development servers (my production > servers are still at 3.4-STABLE pending 4.1). > > If recompiling bothers you so much, we can have make a tarball distribution > of the new module binaries. There - problem solved. > > People are going to have to recompile their kernels also, in order to get > the SMP changes. Why is it such a stretch to require recompiling the kernel > modules as well? Because if we do not provide a STABLE ABI, we WON'T get third-party (binary only) kernel modules. I'm very divided in this issue. 4.x has just started, and would be seriously impaired if no further improvements to it's SMP get in. On the other hand, if we can't garantee third party vendors a stable ABI, we won't get third party vendors. Alas... Dillon, how much of SMP improvements will be getting back-ported without further breaks in ABI, specially as BSDI code starts to trickle in? -- Daniel C. Sobral (8-DCS) dcs@newsguy.com dcs@freebsd.org dcs@there.is.no.such.thing.as.a.bsdconspiracy.net GPL certainly doesn't meet Janis Joplin's definition of freedom: "Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose." To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message