From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Feb 15 1:47: 7 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from front6m.grolier.fr (front6m.grolier.fr [195.36.216.56]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 60B5437B503 for ; Thu, 15 Feb 2001 01:47:03 -0800 (PST) Received: from nas1-57.mea.club-internet.fr (nas1-57.mea.club-internet.fr [195.36.139.57]) by front6m.grolier.fr (8.9.3/No_Relay+No_Spam_MGC990224) with ESMTP id KAA15802; Thu, 15 Feb 2001 10:46:47 +0100 (MET) Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2001 09:45:44 +0100 (CET) From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?G=E9rard_Roudier?= X-Sender: groudier@linux.local To: Matthew Jacob Cc: Sergey Babkin , freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: UDI environment now released. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG 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. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message