Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2003 12:47:44 -0800 From: Marcel Moolenaar <marcel@xcllnt.net> To: Juli Mallett <jmallett@FreeBSD.ORG> Cc: Benno Rice <benno@FreeBSD.ORG>, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Patch to teach config(8) about "platforms". Message-ID: <20030129204744.GC5416@dhcp01.pn.xcllnt.net> In-Reply-To: <20030129115542.A79257@FreeBSD.org> References: <20030129044548.GI1016@athlon.pn.xcllnt.net> <20030128205737.A22274@FreeBSD.org> <20030129051853.GJ1016@athlon.pn.xcllnt.net> <1043819769.648.52.camel@localhost> <20030129062558.GB1715@athlon.pn.xcllnt.net> <1043821970.648.60.camel@localhost> <20030129074647.GD1715@athlon.pn.xcllnt.net> <1043828377.648.67.camel@localhost> <20030129100411.GA3272@dhcp01.pn.xcllnt.net> <20030129115542.A79257@FreeBSD.org>
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On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 11:55:42AM -0800, Juli Mallett wrote: > > > > What if an architecture doesn't have different platforms. Do we > > want to give a platform name that matches the architecture or > > do we make platform optional? I think I prefer it to be optional. > > This could mean we have a kernel config file that has no machine > > and not platform keyword. > > Well, the whole point of "platform" is it doesn't affect first-class > platforms, which is where we have "one architecture, one platform". I think the number of first-class platforms is less than you think At this time only ia64 and sparc64 would fit, with ia64 having a high chance of growing another platform... Alpha has multiple platforms, but it has not been made explicit. pc98 is an alternate platform for i386. And we have PowerPC and mips. So, I look at it from the opposite way. The 1A, 1P case is a special' case of 1A, nP, for any reasonable number n ;-) 1A = one architecture, 1P = one platform, nP = multiple platforms, where n = the number of platforms. Designing it such that it's good for any number n of platforms yields a system that more easily captures the exception of n=1. Trying to handle the n>1 case in a system that's primarily designed to handle n=1 is much harder. You can say that pc98 is the result of trying to handle n>1 in a system that can only work with n=1. > In those cases it would gain nothing, and by not having it, there is > no loss. Of course, i386 might eventually grow it, if pc98 is merged, > as there may be some things we would restrict to the !pc98 case. But > hell, at that point we may have "platform isa" and "platform acpi" or > something, for the two different growing i386 platforms. I suppose jhb > might prefer "legacy" for the former :) What about IO_APIC vs PIC? The point is not that we're discussing whether or not they should be platforms, but that in a weird way one could treat it as different platforms. If we can handle such a case then nothing is lost if we don't make use of it for i386. > If we just make "machine" mean more of what it means now, then we're > set. But pc98 needs to be dealt with. Maybe a summary of what's been discussed would be a good idea. We've had a lot of mail with some confusion to be dealt with as well... -- Marcel Moolenaar USPA: A-39004 marcel@xcllnt.net To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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