Date: Tue, 06 Jan 1998 14:43:36 -0800 (PST) From: Simon Shapiro <shimon@simon-shapiro.org> To: John Birrell <jb@freebsd1.cimlogic.com.au> Cc: freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG, jim.king@mail.sstar.com, (Jordan K. Hubbard) <jkh@time.cdrom.com> Subject: Re: Alpha port.. Message-ID: <XFMail.980106144336.shimon@simon-shapiro.org> In-Reply-To: <199801062023.HAA09855@freebsd1.cimlogic.com.au>
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On 06-Jan-98 John Birrell wrote: > Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: >> And I'm sure you're not alone in wanting to see that happen. The >> question here seems more to be one of who we're going to line up to >> actually *do* that. :) > > Sorry, but I *still* don't see what this achieves other than further > fragmenting an already low user-base. I've said in the past that I'd > like to see a FreeBSD user-space on top of a NetBSD/Alpha kernel. > I know that this is not a simple task because the kernel interface > differs. Clean that up and you're well on the way to supporting the > other architectures that NetBSD has too. > > But if people put all their effort into trying to munge the i386-centric > low-level kernel code to run on the Alpha it will be a long time before > you even get back to where NetBSD is at the moment. So what have you > achieved? > > Another thing that needs some effort IMHO, is keeping the device driver > interface consistent between the BSD variants so that anyone can pick up > a driver from one and use it on another. I'd like to see someone write > a design document that defines exactly what the device driver interface > is. And I don't mean example code, but something you could test for > compliance against. And if you're being adventurous, try including the > NetBSD design in there too. But I guess that is not the sort of thing > that hackers want to do. 8-( Hear! Hear! A word of sanity!!! All these O/S not only claim to be Unix. They claim to be BSD Unix, while none of them can really share even source code (Yes, I know of #ifdef; That is not a common source. That is a single source text file). ---------- Sincerely Yours, Simon Shapiro Shimon@Simon-Shapiro.ORG Voice: 503.799.2313
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