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Date:      Tue, 14 Nov 2000 18:47:06 -0800
From:      Alfred Perlstein <bright@wintelcom.net>
To:        Steveb 99 <steveb98@earthlink.net>
Cc:        hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Porting Linux to FreeBSD
Message-ID:  <20001114184706.C29448@fw.wintelcom.net>
In-Reply-To: <003401c04ead$4a6537b0$0441d9cf@earthlink.net>; from steveb98@earthlink.net on Tue, Nov 14, 2000 at 06:39:34PM -0800
References:  <200011140149.eAE1nRI14099@portnoy.lbl.gov> <3A11401F.85B7F51E@vangelderen.org> <003401c04ead$4a6537b0$0441d9cf@earthlink.net>

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* Steveb 99 <steveb98@earthlink.net> [001114 18:39] wrote:
> How different is Linux from FreeBSD when it comes to porting code.  Nothing
> specific just in general, are there major differences or small differences.
> Assuming same hardware just OS is different.  Device driver vs applications.
> What areas are the gottcha's?

(I wish you had been more specific...)

There can be a lot of gotchas if you're not careful and you use
low level interfaces into the system, let me explain:

If you use Linux's SOCK_PACKET to do packet filtering you're in
for a minor headache when porting to FreeBSD because FreeBSD doesn't
have this.

However, if you use the freely available 'libpcap' your application
would work on Linux and FreeBSD (and Solaris, and others) without
problems because libpcap offers an abstraction over several 'native'
packet filters.

It's really a matter of how your code is done and how Linux specific
it is, if you've already ported to Solaris as well as Linux you'll
probably find most of the kinks worked out by the time you get
around to FreeBSD.  But if you make it a habit of #include
<linux/foo.h> you're not going to have much fun.

As far as device drivers there's some similarities but also a lot
of differences with locking structure and internals such as 
network buffers and IO buffers, porting drivers is most likely
going to be a lot more difficult that porting application code.

best of luck,
-- 
-Alfred Perlstein - [bright@wintelcom.net|alfred@freebsd.org]
"I have the heart of a child; I keep it in a jar on my desk."


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