From owner-freebsd-alpha Tue Jan 6 12:18:43 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id MAA17247 for alpha-outgoing; Tue, 6 Jan 1998 12:18:43 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from freebsd1.cimlogic.com.au (cimlog.lnk.telstra.net [139.130.51.31]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id MAA17225 for ; Tue, 6 Jan 1998 12:18:14 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jb@freebsd1.cimlogic.com.au) Received: (from jb@localhost) by freebsd1.cimlogic.com.au (8.8.7/8.8.7) id HAA09855; Wed, 7 Jan 1998 07:23:14 +1100 (EST) (envelope-from jb) From: John Birrell Message-Id: <199801062023.HAA09855@freebsd1.cimlogic.com.au> Subject: Re: Alpha port.. In-Reply-To: <707.884107542@time.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at "Jan 6, 98 09:25:42 am" To: jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 07:23:13 +1100 (EST) Cc: jim.king@mail.sstar.com, freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL32 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: > And I'm sure you're not alone in wanting to see that happen. The > question here seems more to be one of who we're going to line up to > actually *do* that. :) Sorry, but I *still* don't see what this achieves other than further fragmenting an already low user-base. I've said in the past that I'd like to see a FreeBSD user-space on top of a NetBSD/Alpha kernel. I know that this is not a simple task because the kernel interface differs. Clean that up and you're well on the way to supporting the other architectures that NetBSD has too. But if people put all their effort into trying to munge the i386-centric low-level kernel code to run on the Alpha it will be a long time before you even get back to where NetBSD is at the moment. So what have you achieved? Another thing that needs some effort IMHO, is keeping the device driver interface consistent between the BSD variants so that anyone can pick up a driver from one and use it on another. I'd like to see someone write a design document that defines exactly what the device driver interface is. And I don't mean example code, but something you could test for compliance against. And if you're being adventurous, try including the NetBSD design in there too. But I guess that is not the sort of thing that hackers want to do. 8-( > > Jordan > Regards, -- John Birrell - jb@cimlogic.com.au; jb@netbsd.org; jb@freebsd.org CIMlogic Pty Ltd, GPO Box 117A, Melbourne Vic 3001, Australia +61 418 353 137