Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 19:04:30 -0500 (EST) From: "Matthew N. Dodd" <winter@jurai.net> To: freebsd-sparc@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Bootstrapping on NetBSD. Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.02.9811301849430.17054-100000@sasami.jurai.net>
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I've been pondering the userland bootstrap on NetBSD (halfway through re-integrating all the NETBSD_SYSCALL stuff from the alpha bootstrap) and was wondering if there were an easier way. As we all may or may not know NetBSD has no 'native' syscall interface/ABI but provides an emulation layer for binary ABI compatibality and runs all their userland code through it. (Ie, even local NetBSD execs are 'emulated'). Given this, and the fact that NetBSD runs on both the Sparc and the Sparc64, it would seem to be far easier to modify NetBSD to add FreeBSD/Sparc and FreeBSD/Sparc64 support than to hack and rehack FreeBSD to allow it to be bootstrapped easily. I've been playing around with compiling the FreeBSD userland on NetBSD/sparc and have been fairly successful with the exception that none of the resultant binaries run. (crt0.a and libc.a problems.) I'm willing to bet that given the above (FreeBSD/sparc(64) emulation on NetBSD) and a working toolchain, 90% or more of the userland would just work. (This seems to be in line with the Alpha port in its begennings.) Distributing a toolchain and NetBSD patches (which I'm sure netbsd-current would commit given their desire to run (on) everything.) would greatly open up the playing field to interested parties. I'll take a look at the compat code tonite; can someone give us an idea of what needs to be done to beat the in-tree toolchain into producing FreeBSD/sparc ELF32 binaries? Thanks. -- | Matthew N. Dodd | 78 280Z | 75 164E | 84 245DL | FreeBSD/NetBSD/Sprite/VMS | | winter@jurai.net | This Space For Rent | ix86,sparc,m68k,pmax,vax | | http://www.jurai.net/~winter | Are you k-rad elite enough for my webpage? | To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-sparc" in the body of the message
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