Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2006 22:24:09 -0800 (PST) From: "Bruce R. Montague" <brucem@mail.cruzio.com> To: freebsd-small@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: [RFC] what do we do with picobsd ? Message-ID: <200602020624.k126O9eI000470@mail.cruzio.com>
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Hi. I have found having the source to PicoBSD available in the kernel source tree quite useful, even if it's not in "turn-key" working shape and can't generate things that fit on a floppy anymore (I've used it for Disk-On-Chip and CF based systems, starting with around 2Mbyte devices). Most small systems <32M are going to be customized a bit, so the fact that things don't always completely work is tolerable... It's nice to start with what's conveniently there... Since picobsd is almost all simple config scripts and the picobsd script (well, there's tinyware too), it doesn't take up much space. (around 750K?) It's helpful to know that what you are looking at is the "intended best stuff" that works with the particular kernel/version, even if it doesn't work and isn't in perfect sync. If there was some other picobsd port scheme, you would be rummaging around worrying about whether you had the right version, searching version compatibility lists, etc... So I would encourage FreeBSD to keep PicoBSD where it is. And since Nanobsd's already there and it would be great to have Freesbie... so maybe a single dir with alternative build systems? Also, picobsd might yet again be useful for things like Xen guest-OSes that are each a simple wrapper for a single guest-OS application, enabling application migration. In this case, having a fully-functional OS with TCP/IP in as small a guest-OS footprint as possible might be useful. (and the Xen paravirtualization port of FreeBSD is apparently coming along...) - bruce
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