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Date:      Mon, 18 Jun 2001 23:32:24 -0700
From:      Doug Barton <DougB@DougBarton.net>
To:        Warner Losh <imp@harmony.village.org>
Cc:        freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Changes to the /etc/rc* boot system
Message-ID:  <3B2EF1F8.9710CC61@DougBarton.net>
References:  <20010618175638.L37408-100000@dt051n37.san.rr.com> <200106190451.f5J4ppV59574@harmony.village.org>

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[Prelude, Warner and I discussed this off line... ]

Warner Losh wrote:
> 
> In message <20010618175638.L37408-100000@dt051n37.san.rr.com> Doug Barton writes:
> : A) Examine what we have (most of us understand that pretty well)
> : B) Figure out what we need (in progress, nowhere near done yet)
> : C) Take a hard look at NetBSD's code to determine if it meets our needs
> : D) If we decide C) is "yes," figure out how to port/improve it
> :
> : C is pretty much a given in most people's minds at this point. Whether
> : that is a good thing or not I'm not sure, but let's take that as a
> : starting point for now.
> 
> Given that it is pretty much a given in the minds of many of the grey
> beards of the project, the snide comments like the above are
> irrelevant. :-)

	Not snide, just disappointed, frankly. But I'll learn to live with it.
:)

> I'm sorry to be so blunt, but David asked a subset of
> core members that were on IRC at the time (3) if he could do a vendor
> branch import of NetBSD rc.d and we all said go for it so long as you
> coordinate the back migration with NetBSD.  That's one reason why he's
> been so adamant about talking about it amoung ourselves first before
> we approach the NetBSD developers with every little possible
> improvement.

	I think that we're closer to agreement here than it may appear. Last I
heard from obrien he was overloaded, and wasn't looking to head this up
himself unless no one else was going to do it. We don't want to overload
him with stuff that "only he can do" if there are other alternatives. 
 
> We're trying hard to prevent a fork here.  That's a little more
> important than necessarily having something that is technically
> perfect in someone's mind.

	Once again, closer together than apart. My goal (restated) is to
_improve_ the netbsd system, including input from the team that put the
thing together so that we can improve the system itself and the
portability of it. 

> : Given that there will be no small effort in
> : porting their code to our system
> 
> It actually is looking like it isn't a huge effort, appart from
> writing a few more scripts or doing some minor rearrangement.

	Everyone I've talked to has a different story on this. My take on it is
that the amount of work involved in the port justifies a careful look at
it before the import. 
 
> : given that we already have the
> : cooperation of one of the NetBSD developers to help with D),
> 
> More than one.  I have NetBSD commit privs :-)

	I was speaking specifically of the NetBSD developers who developed the
rc system they are using currently. 

> Of course, I'd have to
> run the changes by the responsible parties of for those parts of the
> NetBSD tree.  I've had experience with integrating code into the
> NetBSD tree, so I have some perspective that most people don't have.

	That is definitely the kind of help we need. I have some limited
experience in working with openbsd folks on cross-platform issues, but
the more the merrier. 

> : 1. What needs to be done differently on our system than theirs?
> : 2. What would we like to improve on in their current system?
> : 3. How can we take the current code and make it easier to maintain
> :    across both platforms?
> 
> Good questions, but they imply that we want to do a lot of work on the
> NetBSD rc.d system.  We don't.  We do not want the second system
> effect to overwhelm the nice, clean simple design that NetBSD has
> right now.

	See above. 

> : If we can have some good answers to those questions ready for after
> : usenix, then we can start off the "What would the NetBSD developers do
> : differently knowing what they know now?" conversation with some
> : intelligent points of our own.
> 
> Right, but we should let the right people do the talking as well.  The
> last thing we need is 10 different people to go up to Luke and give
> him 10 different stories.

	Right, this is my goal as well. We'll work on this off line. 

Doug

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