From owner-freebsd-current Sun Nov 10 10:22:58 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7C9AE37B401 for ; Sun, 10 Nov 2002 10:22:55 -0800 (PST) Received: from hun.org (hun.org [216.190.27.122]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D440343E6E for ; Sun, 10 Nov 2002 10:22:54 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from attila@hun.org) Received: by hun.org (Postfix, from userid 1001) id 02F7B57434; Sun, 10 Nov 2002 18:22:48 +0000 (GMT) Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2002 18:22:48 +0000 (GMT) Message-Id: <20021110182248.3yf58829@hun.org> From: Daniel Flickinger X-Mailer: AttilaMail with XEmacs & Postfix on FreeBSD 5.0-CURRENT X-Ballistic: N 37.218497 W 113.614979 X-Address: 31 N 700 E, St George UT 84770-3028 X-Squawk: (435) 680-0750 X-No-Archive: yes X-Tags: Sanity is the Playground for the Unimaginative In-Reply-To: <3DCD878F.1669D78B@mindspring.com> References: <200211091738.33940.dfr@nlsystems.com> To: Terry Lambert Cc: Doug Rabson , Daniel Eischen , M.Warner Losh , ataraxia@cox.net, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: [PATCH] note the __sF change in src/UPDATING Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; name="text" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Content-Disposition: inline Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Having lived through the first *nix "implosion" of the 80s, I _emphatically_ agree with Terry. I wrote a 300,000+ line application which was endemic to Fed regulatory agencies and spooks. Every time there was a system bid, as many as 100 different hardware implementations would appear out of the woodwork demanding to be ported to compete, always including a horde of 286-Xenix implementations (rejected, triggering more than one lawsuit). Zilog Zeus was a perfect example: shift-left-24 did not work.... --but Zilog was the best supported. Most everyone else changed ABIs and binary compatibilities on their own hardware at least once a month. In defense, I built "levels" of libraries: Type 1 included read, write, and _all_ system calls. Type 2 included all the string functions That brought the volatile code down to two libraries and ZEUS was an #ifdef. Terry's example works, too: Build it _and_ roadmap it. in Utah, everyone was once on the grid: you only had names for Main _and_ Center _or_ Tabernacle. Now everyone is getting cute with street names --that means the address is somewhere on a 20 mile line since they no longer enforce Brigham's grid. I found it significantly less painful to flush my _entire_ application list after the 15 Aug and early Oct changes in 5.0. Flushed 300+ and literally rebuilt the system as if it was a virgin pair of disks. Only restored 60+, 10+ of which were XFree4 --lot of dead wood but I had _zero_ legacy aps, libraries, includes, and whatever, having tracked CURRENT since. 1.x. Since the npx reset patch and rebuilding everything, I have not had a single crash, panic, or lockup --not even Mozilla. Personally, I think 5.0 should require new binaries; BUT, tell that to third party vendors and they will write off FreeBSD, particularly those that only ship binaries. As to .so.x numbers being equal in lib and lib/compat, perhaps ld-elf.so.1/rtld can be made smart enough to decide whether or not the file is a compat linked file? Sent: Sat, 09 Nov 2002 14:09:19 -0800 by Terry Lambert: + Doug Rabson wrote: + > The kernel ABI is hopeless. It changes almost daily :-(. At one time, I + > thought I could change this but these days, I don't think anyone except + > me cares about having a stable ABI in the kernel. + + I care. It's almost the most important thing to be able to + build anything of value. + + But a stable API is required for a stable ABI. It does + absolutely no good to build a cathedral, if, by the time you + are done, the roads have moved so that there is no road + which leads to it. + + The next most important thing is to document it, so that + people can use it. "All coordinates are expressed in + logitude and lattitute. North is that way. No cows are + permitted in the city limits. All cats and dogs which are + uncollared and tagged will be captured and spayed and + neutered". + + If you can't agree on a coordinate system ("OLDCARD? + NEWCARD? REDCARD? BLUECARD?"), then at least agree to get + rid of data interfaces; today, people are adding to them + with sysctl exposured of structs, as if it's not going to be + a problem. It's a problem. It's one thing to say "The + cathedral is a about a mile yonder of of Johnson's barn, + just down the road a piece from Smithy, which is about a + league yonder, and then follow the creek for a spell", and + something else entirely to say "The cathedral is at 117 East + 32st street; this is 12421 West 1st street". To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message