From owner-freebsd-current Wed Jan 19 17:56:57 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from rah.star-gate.com (216-200-29-190.snj0.flashcom.net [216.200.29.194]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C3B4B14D4C for ; Wed, 19 Jan 2000 17:56:54 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from hasty@rah.star-gate.com) Received: from rah.star-gate.com (localhost.star-gate.com [127.0.0.1]) by rah.star-gate.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id RAA02097; Wed, 19 Jan 2000 17:56:11 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from hasty@rah.star-gate.com) Message-Id: <200001200156.RAA02097@rah.star-gate.com> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0.2 2/24/98 To: rod@zort.on.ca Cc: Christopher Masto , current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Neat little DPT utils... In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 19 Jan 2000 20:48:38 EST." <00011920510403.00537@rbtBSD.intranet> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2000 17:56:11 -0800 From: Amancio Hasty Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > On Wed, 19 Jan 2000, you wrote: > > Unfortunately, we currently have a regression problem in FreeBSD. > > Newer releases tend to drop support for things that have no active > > maintainer (or a maintainer who is too worn out by continually > > rewriting his or her software to cope with changed interfaces). > > Another unfortunate side effect of this is that some developers base > > their work on older releases rather than chase the moving target of > > -current. > > If thats the case, then FreeBSD should stop changing :). > > Rather, with the capabilities of NewBus and the module system could it not be > organized in such a way that the interface the driver requires is loaded along > with the driver itself? Perhaps older interfaces just call the functions of > the new interfaces. Give them a 1 or 2 year grace period to convert over > before dropping them cold. (Thats 1 year in -stable, and 1 year of -current). > My strategy in the past has been to develop kernel stuff for -current . The interfaces to device drivers or modules is usually a very tiny part of the driver or module. -- Amancio Hasty hasty@rah.star-gate.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message