From owner-freebsd-ppc@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Dec 18 18:47:01 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ppc@FreeBSD.org Delivered-To: freebsd-ppc@FreeBSD.ORG Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1B5FE16A415 for ; Mon, 18 Dec 2006 18:47:01 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from xcllnt@mac.com) Received: from smtpout.mac.com (smtpout.mac.com [17.250.248.178]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C21D943CBE for ; Mon, 18 Dec 2006 18:46:55 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from xcllnt@mac.com) Received: from mac.com (smtpin01-en2 [10.13.10.146]) by smtpout.mac.com (Xserve/8.12.11/smtpout08/MantshX 4.0) with ESMTP id kBIIXmLT021438 for ; Mon, 18 Dec 2006 10:33:48 -0800 (PST) Received: from [66.129.237.56] ([66.129.237.56]) (authenticated bits=0) by mac.com (Xserve/smtpin01/MantshX 4.0) with ESMTP id kBIIXjjs002812 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=AES128-SHA bits=128 verify=NO) for ; Mon, 18 Dec 2006 10:33:46 -0800 (PST) Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v752.3) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed To: ppc@FreeBSD.org From: Marcel Moolenaar Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2006 10:33:01 -0800 X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.752.3) X-Brightmail-Tracker: AAAAAA== X-Brightmail-scanned: yes X-Proofpoint-Virus-Version: vendor=fsecure engine=4.65.5446:2.3.11, 1.2.37, 4.0.164 definitions=2006-12-18_02:2006-12-18, 2006-12-18, 2006-12-18 signatures=0 X-Proofpoint-Spam-Details: rule=notspam policy=default score=0 spamscore=0 ipscore=0 adultscore=0 classifier=spam adjust=0 reason=mlx engine=3.1.0-0612050001 definitions=main-0612180027 Cc: Subject: Adding new PowerPC platforms to the build X-BeenThere: freebsd-ppc@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Porting FreeBSD to the PowerPC List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2006 18:47:01 -0000 All, There has been some mention of activity here about porting FreeBSD to hardware other than Macintosh. I'm in fact collaborating with Rafal to add support for e500 (mpc85xx). In this thread I don't necessarily want to dig deep into the porting effort, as much as I want to find closure on how we should utilize the build variables to support differing platforms easily as well as discuss the mechanics of configuring the kernel. The most obvious variables we can and/or need to use are MACHINE and CPUTYPE. For all of the PowerPC ports I expect MACHINE_ARCH to be fixed. What is important is that CPUTYPE has more relation to the compiler than it has to the kernel. MACHINE has more relation to the kernel than anything else. In particular changing MACHINE does not change CPUTYPE and vice versa. There's another variable: MACHINE_CPU. It is defined as the oldest CPU that is supported for a particular architecture. This variable is not currently used on PowerPC. I don't think it's unreasonable to use this variable to indicate the kind of features we expect to find on the target CPU and as such to be able to use it to distinguish between, say, a PowerPC 7455 and a Book-E? At this time there's nothing that checks and/or sets CPUTYPE for PowerPC. As I said, MACHINE_CPU is not used at all. The big question is: can we make it so that we can use existing variables to build realeases for 1) Apple hardware, having a Book III-S ISA processor and 2) embedded hardware with varying drivers and using a Book III-E ISA processor? In particular I'd like to see the tinderbox and make release work without any additional kluging. Would that be possible? Thoughts? -- Marcel Moolenaar xcllnt@mac.com