Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 08:56:25 -0800 (PST) From: Jason Evans <jasone@canonware.com> To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Beginning SPARC port Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.95.971205141315.20201G-100000@paladio>
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As has been alluded to in some of Jordan Hubbard's email, Sun Microelectronics (SME, the processor division of Sun) recently discussed paying FreeBSD core to officially support a port of FreeBSD to SPARC. These plans fell through in some way (I wasn't part of the discussion, so I don't know details), but SME is having me work on the port. I'm a full-time employee of SME, and estimate that I can spend 30-35 hours per week of my work week on the SPARC FreeBSD porting effort (plus whatever personal time I spend). This is a wonderful opportunity for me, as it is for the FreeBSD community in general. I'm getting paid real money to do this, so I have no problems with devoting time to the project. My additional duties here at SME include gathering technical information for RTOS vendors that are porting their OSes to SPARC, so I'm in a good position to get my hands on useful documentation necessary for the port. All code that comes from my efforts will be available to FreeBSD under the standard BSD license. As far as my background goes, I must say that I'm not a hardware god, or an OS god for that matter. However, I'm very proficient at coding and debugging, and learn very quickly. That said, I'll probably inadvertently ask a lot of questions that will make you think, "This guy's trying to port an OS?!" Feel free to point out if I'm asking dumb questions, but please be so kind as to also tell me why they're dumb questions so that I know how to find the answers. I'm working to serve the FreeBSD community in a very specific way, and I'm free, other than whatever time of yours I take up. Yes, I'm getting paid to do this, but the passion I feel for FreeBSD and for free software in general is very much my own. I want to run SPARC FreeBSD at home! I've already had one person mention to me that he is interested in helping with the port. Please let me know if you are also interested in helping. I can use the help, believe me, even if it's simply answering questions about hardware. My apologies if the following questions are answered somewhere in documentation. I've read the FreeBSD Handbook, but won't have a FreeBSD machine for another week or so. 1) Is it possible with cvsup to maintain my own source tree with my modifications, yet stay synched with current, so that once I have the kernel running, I can submit a single update to the current tree (or have someone with write access do it for me)? 2) Supposing that 1) is possible, does it make more sense to simply grab current once, port it to SPARC, then deal with merging it back into current? This would be one major effort, versus constant small efforts to stay current. 3) Again supposing that 1) is possible, is it additionally feasible to have multiple people working on my local tree with some sort of revision control? I haven't asked anyone about getting write access to the source tree. Perhaps that is better discussed in private email. I'm not yet sure whether I need access to get any work done. If so, is there a rite of passage? =) Thanks, Jason Jason Evans Email: [jasone@canonware.com] Home phone: [(650) 856-8204] Office phone: [(408) 774-8007] Quote: ["Invention is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration" - Thomas Edison]
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