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Date:      Thu, 15 Feb 2001 09:45:44 +0100 (CET)
From:      =?ISO-8859-1?Q?G=E9rard_Roudier?= <groudier@club-internet.fr>
To:        Matthew Jacob <mjacob@feral.com>
Cc:        Sergey Babkin <babkin@bellatlantic.net>, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: UDI environment now released.
Message-ID:  <Pine.LNX.4.10.10102150859510.605-100000@linux.local>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0102141723270.22737-100000@zeppo.feral.com>

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On Wed, 14 Feb 2001, Matthew Jacob wrote:

> On Wed, 14 Feb 2001, Sergey Babkin wrote:
>=20
> > Matthew Jacob wrote:
> > >=20
> > > The problem is that at the time this was a huge issue there were a mu=
ch larger
> > > number of machines and pieces of h/w and radically different OS's (or=
 flavors
> > > within Unix even) to support. Such a wide set of differences is not r=
eally
> > > there any more, hence the cost of such support (and the style in whic=
h it is
> > > being done) makes less sense than it used to.
> >=20
> > I'm afraid, it is. How many versions of FreeBSD with incompatible
> > driver interfaces are out there ?
>=20
> Not too many. Major release rules have been adhered somewhat.

Given an O/S, this looks like pragmatism to me rather than rules. Even
when going to a new major O/S version, having to heavily rework the entire
driver collection prior to a release would be kind of O/S suicide, in my
humble opinion. :)

> > How many versions of Linux with
> > the same sort of incompatibilities ?
>=20
> Linux is far worse - the release of the moment....

Worse than what regarding what?

A far as the topic is kernel interface changes between major versions
(that seem to affect the second digit in Linux versionning), I donnot see
your point. Au contraire, most (all?) Linux kernel interface changes I
have had to take into account in some drivers seemed to have been designed
in order to minimize driver code changes.

About the Linux release of the moment.... :)

But we must consider the hudge amount of changes between Linux-2.2 and
Linux-2.4. I am under the impression that the differences between
FreeBSD-4 and FreeBSD-5 kernels will be of a comparable order of
magnitude.
How better FreeBSD will cope whith such mega release is what we must focus
about instead of doing not yet relevant comparisons, IMO. :)

> But the primary motivation for a UDI like i/f (which, btw, has a lot *not=
*
> going for it) in terms of multiplatform support is not the issue it once =
was.

Ah? My English-to-French parser oopsed here. You may reword it. :-)

  G=E9rard.



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