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Date:      Tue, 18 Mar 1997 17:38:52 +1100 (EST)
From:      John Birrell <jb@cimlogic.com.au>
To:        pgiffuni@fps.biblos.unal.edu.co (Pedro Giffuni)
Cc:        freebsd-platforms@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: To share or not share ? (was: Someone working on a SPARC version?)
Message-ID:  <199703180638.RAA04682@freebsd1.cimlogic.com.au>
In-Reply-To: <332E4DC0.6455@fps.biblos.unal.edu.co> from Pedro Giffuni at "Mar 18, 97 00:09:36 am"

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Pedro Giffuni wrote:
> Of course, it would be very stupid from myself not to admit that we need
> to modify our tree following the NetBSD example (BTW, IMO, the best time
> to do it is ASAP, can someone illustrate me on what are the clear
> objectives behing 3.0-current ?). But we should protect our evolved code
> (LKMs and devices) from being swapped because another OS has a prettier
> structure than ours.

I think it is unrealistic to hold out hope that the kernel designs
will ever be compatible enough to share code "easily" --- without
hacking. With the exception of device drivers, I don't care about
that 8-). The practical thing to do is to use the system that is
already available for the architecture(s) you want to use. I use
FreeBSD for i386 and NetBSD for Alpha.

For me, though, the big win would be sharing libraries and their
header files because this reduces the amount of code my company
has to support. From libraries and header files, the ports
tree naturally follows. 

When (if) I get time I'll try building NetBSD's libc on FreeBSD
and try building ports against that. That should give me some idea
of how incompatible the interfaces between userlands and the kernels
are.

Regards,

-- 
John Birrell - jb@cimlogic.com.au; jb@netbsd.org
CIMlogic Pty Ltd, 119 Cecil Street, South Melbourne Vic 3205, Australia
Tel +61 3 9690 6900 Fax +61 3 9690 6650 Mob +61 418 353 137



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