Date: Mon, 8 Apr 2013 21:28:58 -0500 From: Kevin Day <toasty@dragondata.com> To: Alfred Perlstein <bright@mu.org> Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, Adrian Chadd <adrian@freebsd.org>, Amit Rawat <aamitr4@gmail.com>, Jilles Tjoelker <jilles@stack.nl> Subject: Re: GSOC 2013 project " Kernel Size Reduction for Embedded System " Message-ID: <FEDB1271-6D11-4F9A-A4DF-B2AD717DB067@dragondata.com> In-Reply-To: <5163622F.60604@mu.org> References: <CAOhv3dpTM9J9oiLpdw8xOAToXT_tQ3VW4Mv1F%2B8n7xhG%2BJK93w@mail.gmail.com> <20130408224423.GA64696@stack.nl> <CAJ-VmonVre%2BVT2tTdQf3hA6DvKifqrJtxDT1RX8KEyW6a-=EXQ@mail.gmail.com> <5163622F.60604@mu.org>
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On Apr 8, 2013, at 7:34 PM, Alfred Perlstein <bright@mu.org> wrote: > However, until a bunch of embedded folks come forward and state what = they are really willing to sacrifice, then we won't really have anything = to go on, and it will be guessing at what will work for a space that not = all of us are familiar with. >=20 > So I'm hoping some people can make the tough call to give direction = here, otherwise nothing good will come of it. >=20 > Has anyone actually done this? Or maybe compared against another = embedded OS? Ages ago we had to make things work in 16 or 32MB of total system memory = on i386.=20 For the most part, disabling every compiled-in option/driver we didn't = need was 90% of the effort. Which options/drivers is going to be totally = application dependent, so that really can't be done for you. As for the rest, there isn't any large low hanging fruit that can get = culled from the kernel easily. The base kernel isn't modular enough to = trim out individual syscalls or anything, and doing so wouldn't have = made a huge dent. There are a lot of ways FreeBSD could be more embedded friendly (being = able turn on/off parts of userland depending on licenses is a huge one), = but producing a trimmed kernel isn't something I'd rank very highly. If = building a kernel with everything modularized as possible isn't small = enough, FreeBSD probably isn't going to work for you for other reasons.
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