From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Mar 19 16:09:38 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id QAA03544 for hackers-outgoing; Wed, 19 Mar 1997 16:09:38 -0800 (PST) Received: from genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au (genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au [129.127.96.120]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id QAA03529 for ; Wed, 19 Mar 1997 16:09:08 -0800 (PST) Received: (from msmith@localhost) by genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au (8.8.5/8.7.3) id KAA29110; Thu, 20 Mar 1997 10:36:44 +1030 (CST) From: Michael Smith Message-Id: <199703200006.KAA29110@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> Subject: Re: wd driver questions In-Reply-To: <199703192035.NAA12366@phaeton.artisoft.com> from Terry Lambert at "Mar 19, 97 01:35:42 pm" To: terry@lambert.org (Terry Lambert) Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 10:36:43 +1030 (CST) Cc: msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au, terry@lambert.org, bde@zeta.org.au, dgy@rtd.com, hackers@FreeBSD.org, helbig@MX.BA-Stuttgart.De X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL28 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Terry Lambert stands accused of saying: > > Yes. This should go. So should all configuration options that > cause conditional compilation of code rather than conditional > inclusion of objects in the link which extend a global linker set. That's a lot harder. I would say "some" rather than "all". > If you get rid of conditional compilation, and leave only conditional > inclusion, then you remove the need for recompile on conditional > changes, and it becomes a binary/linker issue *only*. This is a *good* > thing. Be wary of increasing the linkage overhead too much 8) > > Hmm. The nature of the boot-time linking process would probably imply > > that all of the objects in question would have to be loaded, as there > > would be no paging mechanism by which unloaded sections could be > > loaded until after the system was up, and possibly not even then > > (eg. boot from network server, no kernel core locally). > > They *could* be sparsely loaded. You do not need paged memory > management to support partial loading (look at Win3.1 DLL's). Understood; the point merely being that much of the kernel may be required _before_ there is any method available again to load the bits that were left out. A standalone boot-time linker and associated media drivers are going to be long gone before the kernel is in a position to talk to the media again. > Terry Lambert -- ]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer msmith@gsoft.com.au [[ ]] Genesis Software genesis@gsoft.com.au [[ ]] High-speed data acquisition and (GSM mobile) 0411-222-496 [[ ]] realtime instrument control. (ph) +61-8-8267-3493 [[ ]] Unix hardware collector. "Where are your PEZ?" The Tick [[