Date: Fri, 9 Jan 1998 12:21:17 -0800 (PST) From: Curt Sampson <cjs@portal.ca> To: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> Cc: jb@freebsd1.cimlogic.com.au, jkh@time.cdrom.com, jim.king@mail.sstar.com, freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Alpha port.. Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.3.96.980109120241.1261I-100000@cynic.portal.ca> In-Reply-To: <199801091911.MAA27343@usr09.primenet.com>
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On Fri, 9 Jan 1998, Terry Lambert wrote: > > > Binary compatability. > > > > That's already there, isn't it? And even if FreeBSD has diverged > > that much, it's a relatively simple matter of adding a new emulation > > type. > > I meant with commercial software realeased for non-BSD OS's. Ah. There's already some DU compatability code in NetBSD anyway. > > [Re. install systems:] This is not a major project. > > It is to get it the same across platforms. Huh? It's much *easier* to get it the same across platforms. Most of the work on the install system has been done by i386 folks; I just have to do the alpha MD bits and test it. > Both my NetBSD > Alpha and my NetBSD HP/345 installs were basically done as disk images > with the raw disk out there.... > Personally, I would prefer boot floppies. Well free free to download the boot floppy then: ftp.netbsd.org:/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-1.3/alpha/installation/floppy/install13.fs > I think a set of uniform install methods across platforms is probably > a pretty big deal. Indeed. That's why we have sysinst currently running on arm32, i386, pc532 and pmax, and are busy adding the MD stuff for it to other ports. Now I'll admit sysinst still needs a bunch of work to come up to the level of the FreeBSD install, but it's not rocket science. > Of course, I'm willing to be proven wrong... 8-). Is this enough? :-) > Suffice it to say, I think there would be more Alpha's with BSD > installed if FreeBSD was ported. Yes, probably. > > The benefit the Alpha port would provide FreeBSD would be that it > > will force you to have damn clean code.... > > This is a secondary benefit.... Heh. I suppose that demonstrates the differences between the FreeBSD and NetBSD camps; for NetBSD it's a primary benefit. > I don't think it's that tied to Alpha or anything > else; until you try to port something, you don't resolve portability > issues if you weren't designing for portability in the first place. It is in many ways tied to the alpha, or at least some sort of 64-bit machine. The alpha port really brings out a lot of bugs that simply don't appear when you're testing on strictly 32-bit machines. > The BSD's, even the CSRG code, really was not designed for this; > NetBSD is only now, 4 years after the fact, approaching a good level > of portability -- and then only for the kernel space, not the install > tools or procedures. Probably the procedures are more important than > the tools to implemnt them. I would disagree with that statement. The install tools are coming along nicely, and the rest of userland has come along extremely well. For most purposes, you can sit in front of an Alpha or a Sparc or an i386 running NetBSD and never tell the difference between them. > Certainly, however, there are obvious benefits to doing a port, even > if we don't agree 100% on what those benefits will be. 8-). Well, yes. As I said before, I do believe a port would be of great benefit to FreeBSD, and I certainly hope that nobody is taking this as me trying to discourage the FreeBSD folks or slam them in any way. cjs Curt Sampson cjs@portal.ca Info at http://www.portal.ca/ Internet Portal Services, Inc. Through infinite mist, software reverberates Vancouver, BC (604) 257-9400 In code possess'd of invisible folly.
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