From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Aug 1 7:51:54 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C57D237B41C for ; Thu, 1 Aug 2002 07:51:42 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail.asitatech.com (mail.asitatech.ie [193.120.151.1]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4398543E42 for ; Thu, 1 Aug 2002 07:51:41 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from devnull@asitatech.ie) Received: from yoda.asitatech.ie ([192.168.127.212]) by mail.asitatech.com (Merak 4.2.3) with ESMTP id FJA37319 for ; Thu, 01 Aug 2002 15:48:34 +0100 Received: by yoda.asitatech.ie (Postfix, from userid 1001) id 0446E5C04; Thu, 1 Aug 2002 15:54:25 +0000 (GMT) Date: Thu, 1 Aug 2002 15:54:24 +0000 From: Sergey Lyubka To: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Assembly, Kernels and Bootstraps Message-ID: <20020801155424.GG97092@yoda.asitatech.ie> Mail-Followup-To: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG References: <20020731161322.O5057-100000@boise.neuroflux.com> <20020801102424.GC97092@yoda.asitatech.ie> <3D490353.8A5A07D4@mindspring.com> <20020801101639.A11972@blackhelicopters.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20020801101639.A11972@blackhelicopters.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.27i X-OS: FreeBSD 4.5-STABLE Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Lions wrote a book far long ago, and it is still worth reading. Why? Because he didn't just show the code, he showed the concepts. Describing, say, how to call malloc() is a stupid thing. This can be outdated tomorrow. But describing the concept, how kernel malloc interface has being developed in time, and possible future directions of it - this kind of information will not be outdated for a very long time. A lot of such information is buried now in relatively small number of kernel expert's heads. This is bad. Is it possible to get frosen version, say, 5.0 - current, and describe it? I think it is. Many things may become obsolete, but the knowledge I'm talking about will be revealed. Such book must paint a solid and complete picture of FreeBSD kernel. I see it as analogue to Greg Lehey's book, but for the kernel world. As a side effect, it will attract and educate a large number of newbie kernel hackers, which is I suppose quite positive. regards, -sergey On Thu, Aug 01, 2002 at 10:16:40AM -0400, Michael Lucas wrote: > Terry's very right here. > > I had a hell of a time writing a book about running *stable*; we > change things very quickly here, and it's quite difficult to document. > (Book is due in my hands tomorrow or Saturday, hurrah!) > > I was considering editing a book on kernel internals, soliciting > chapters from the various developers. (They could provide know-how, I > could provide grammar.) But such a book would take four to six months > to assemble, and three months to physically produce. Three months > after that, we'd realistically start seeing contributions based upon > that code. > > That's one year. We have a hard time keeping people out of interfaces > for twelve weeks. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message