From owner-freebsd-arch  Sat Aug 19 20: 3:58 2000
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From: Darren Reed <darrenr@reed.wattle.id.au>
Message-Id: <200008200303.NAA06295@avalon.reed.wattle.id.au>
Subject: Integration of Net/OpenBSD code (was Re: your mail)
To: jkh@zippy.osd.bsdi.com
Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2000 13:03:12 +1000 (EST)
Cc: mjacob@feral.com, freebsd-sparc@FreeBSD.ORG,
	freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG
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> > Jordan- what's the status of the BSDi merge && a sparc port? I sort of
> > thought that something that works would then "just arrive"?
> 
> You mean the BSD/OS merge?  Well, people have taken on the SMPng bits
> and that project appears to be progressing nicely.  Nobody has taken
> on the SPARC bits, however, and I can only point out that lack of
> reference SPARC bits from another BSD implementation has never been
> the problem here.  We've had both NetBSD and OpenBSD to serve that
> purpose for a long time but nobody who actually wanted to do the work
> step forward and do it.  You've been around this biz long enough to
> know that bits never "just arrive", they have to be carried in on a
> stretcher and sent straight to triage. :)

Jordan,
       I think the problem (now) is that the different in-kernel
architectural changes by the BSD groups have created, essentially,
code that is hard to just "copy".  The time it is taking for cardbus
to arrive in FreeBSD, when it is already available in NetBSD, is a
good example of this.  (This is/was Warner Losh's baby, or am I
confused ?)  I'm *really* disappointed that FreeBSD doesn't (yet ?)
support cardbus in 4.x (-current?) :-(

       There is also the problem of increasing the already cumbersome
animosity when one imports code from the other with little or no credit,
etc, which I think sometimes leads to the above problem not being seen
as a "problem" as it makes that step somewhat harder.  (I'm not pointing
fingers here, just merely calling it as I see it.)  In short, what was
able to be done with alpha for FreeBSD may not be as easy for sparc64,
if at all possible.  Given noises made earlier, I'm surprised there has
not been any effort to merge, at least, the BSD/OS work...

Darren
---
NetBSD/sparc64             -           self-hosting for the new millennium!
Port Home page:            -           http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/sparc64/
Complete 64bit snapshots:  -  ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/arch/sparc64/


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