From owner-freebsd-current Mon Apr 24 10: 3:35 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from apollo.backplane.com (apollo.backplane.com [216.240.41.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F2C3B37B7ED for ; Mon, 24 Apr 2000 10:03:32 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dillon@apollo.backplane.com) Received: (from dillon@localhost) by apollo.backplane.com (8.9.3/8.9.1) id KAA70812; Mon, 24 Apr 2000 10:03:26 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dillon) Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 10:03:26 -0700 (PDT) From: Matthew Dillon Message-Id: <200004241703.KAA70812@apollo.backplane.com> To: "Daniel C. Sobral" Cc: Alok Dhir , "'Richard Wackerbarth'" , "'freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG'" Subject: Re: SMP changes and breaking kld object module compatibility References: <3904693F.ED9C5FA6@newsguy.com> Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG :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) Most of the SMP innards are invisible to the user and even invisible (for the most part) to KLD's. For example, making the VM subsystem and network stack MP-safe can probably be done without any external visibility. -Matt Matthew Dillon To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message