Date: Tue, 6 Jan 1998 21:47:46 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: jb@freebsd1.cimlogic.com.au (John Birrell) Cc: jkh@time.cdrom.com, jim.king@mail.sstar.com, freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Alpha port.. Message-ID: <199801062147.OAA12761@usr08.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <199801062023.HAA09855@freebsd1.cimlogic.com.au> from "John Birrell" at Jan 7, 98 07:23:13 am
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> 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? A unified VM and buffer cache. Binary compatability. A working install process that doesn't require a net connection and can operate off a CDROM instead for the non-Intel machines. A large user base. A reorganization of the FreeBSD kernel code to abstract some architectural problems it currently has. A base system for future research in FS and other areas. Ports and packages that don't exist for NetBSD. Symmetric Multiprocessing on non-Intel processors. And that's just a start on a much bigger list... > 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-( NetBSD (and OpenBSD and BSDI) need to move toward a DEVFS architecture; really. FreeBSD needs to move to ELF; really. If you want to treat devices as modules, the OS's you plug them between have to be modular in the first place. No one OS has done all the work needed to make this happen. Not even one from MS. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
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