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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!agate!ihnp4.ucsd.edu!swrinde!pipex!uknet!cf-cm!isl-gate.elsy.cf.ac.uk!paul From: paul@isl-gate.elsy.cf.ac.uk (Paul) Subject: Re: 4.4-lite? Message-ID: <1994Jul20.102951.24247@cm.cf.ac.uk> Sender: paul@isl-gate.elsy.cf.ac.uk (Paul) Organization: ELSYM, University of Wales, College of Cardiff, UK. References: <2vgvc7$3tg@spruce.cic.net> <michaelv.774429899@ponderous.cc.iastate.edu> <Zi2ziVX.dysonj@delphi.com> <30em65$g17@autodesk.autodesk.com> Date: Wed, 20 Jul 1994 10:29:49 +0000 Lines: 88 In article <30em65$g17@autodesk.autodesk.com>, I can teach you how to fish... <greywolf@autodesk.com> wrote: >John Dyson <dysonj@delphi.com> writes in <Zi2ziVX.dysonj@delphi.com> >/* > * Michael L. VanLoon <michaelv@iastate.edu> writes: > * > * >John, I don't mean to be hostile, so please don't take it that way, > * >but several things you're saying just don't quite seem to sync with > * >me. I'm sure you have the best of intentions, so please bear with me, > * >and enlighten me if you can. > * > * I must be over-simplifying the effort, because most of the changes are > * clerical in nature. I see that it would be about a 1 month effort to > * get the machine dependency bugs out (about 1/3-1/2 of our release cycle.) But > * since FreeBSD is truely starting from 4.4Lite, and not backing into it, some > * of the complications are probably mitigated. > >I find it kind of difficult to believe that FreeBSD started with 4.4-Lite, >since the litigation was still going on when FreeBSD was kicking off their >first implementation; by the time the litigation finished, the 4.4-Lite >distribution wasn't even completely available yet (unless there were >some unnameable sources who were providing the code on the side). At >least, to my understanding, Net/2 and 4.4-lite were not identical (the >difference being that Net/2 was still considered "tainted" after the >litigation terminated). FreeBSD 1.X was based on Net/2 but work on that lineage has now ceased and the next release 2.0, will be an entirely new system built on top of 4.4, we've taken a different approach to 4.4 migration than NetBSD in that we've totally scrapped our old src tree and started completely from scratch on a 4.4lite tree (mainly done to ensure no legal comebacks). What John's been alluding to is the fact that multi-architecture support should not be that big an effort for FreeBSD 2.0 because 4.4lite is ALREADY a multi-architecture src base. > > * > * The biggest problem that I have with the continued and biased assertions > * that FreeBSD is not multi-platform capable is that it is propaganda that > * becomes self-fulfilling. If this continues -- my strategy is to buy > * a sparc and do the port (starting with the code contributed to NetBSD.) > >FreeBSD has never *claimed* to be a multi-platform OS; everyone I have talked >to regarding "why doesn't FreeBSD run on <X platform>?" has told me that >their desire was to build a stable OS for one platform. Others have >informed me that the code is SO x86/*SA-bus-centric that the amount of >work required to separate out the different architectures is sufficiently >overwhelming as to discourage that progress. (I have since deleted the >mail since I'm a NetBSD-type person myself, but I recall the comments >pretty clearly). Our position has always been, "we're not going to do any ports until we feel we have a solid base first". It was never the intention to indefinitely limit ourselves to being a x86 OS. We're now approaching the point where we feel we're ready to consider other architectures although as yet there are no plans to do any new ports. The general feeling among the core group seems to be that we're only going to invest time in the newer architectures, such as the sparcs, alphas and powerpc's although that attitude may change too later. > >I seriously don't see the extrication of a well-organised machine- >independent OS rising out of FreeBSD without a considerable amount of >effort spent on re-organizing the source tree. Well, 4.4lite already has a source organised in this manner so that's a moot point. >I hadn't seen any arch-specific directories last I looked at FreeBSD anyway >which was, admittedly, quite some time ago. No, currently there aren't but the point that's been missing in this thread so far is that the NEXT release of FreeBSD is going to basically be 4.4lite with the i386 bits that were missing put back in together with any enhancements we made pulled over from FreeBSD 1.1.5, we therefore inherit the multi-architecture possibilites from 4.4lite without doing all the re-organisation that would otherwise be necessary. That's not to say that there may not still be endian bugs and such in the 4.4lite base and it's correct to say there may still be quite a bit of work to do to get 4.4lite fully portable but nevertheless it's not going to be anywhere near the problem you suggest it currently will be based on what you've seen in FreeBSD 1.1.5 -- Paul Richards, FreeBSD core team member. Intelligent Systems Laboratory, ELSYM ,University of Wales, College Cardiff Internet: paul@isl.cf.ac.uk, JANET(UK): RICHARDSDP@CARDIFF.AC.UK