From owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Sep 10 00:14:49 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 141AD16A4C0 for ; Wed, 10 Sep 2003 00:14:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail.speakeasy.net (mail12.speakeasy.net [216.254.0.212]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4EDE443FBD for ; Wed, 10 Sep 2003 00:14:48 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jhb@FreeBSD.org) Received: (qmail 17773 invoked from network); 10 Sep 2003 07:14:47 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO server.baldwin.cx) ([216.27.160.63]) (envelope-sender )encrypted SMTP for ; 10 Sep 2003 07:14:47 -0000 Received: from laptop.baldwin.cx (p26.n-sfpop02.stsn.com [199.107.153.26]) by server.baldwin.cx (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h8A7Ei6Y038435; Wed, 10 Sep 2003 03:14:45 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from jhb@FreeBSD.org) Message-ID: X-Mailer: XFMail 1.5.4 on FreeBSD X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <1063106587.25817.23.camel@builder02.qubesoft.com> Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 03:15:06 -0400 (EDT) From: John Baldwin To: Doug Rabson X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.55 (1.174.2.19-2003-05-19-exp) cc: arch@freebsd.org Subject: RE: When to burn those bridges X-BeenThere: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussion related to FreeBSD architecture List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 07:14:49 -0000 On 09-Sep-2003 Doug Rabson wrote: > I haven't been paying much attention recently on release engineering > issues so probably I have missed something. When do people think is the > right time to branch off the 5.x line of development and set fire to the > bridges? Go ahead and kill the ISA compat drivers if you need to. I do think that you can probably do this work in a p4 branch until it is ready and delay the killing of compat shims until then maybe. > This led me back to the idea of multiple inheritance in kobj/newbus. > Using multiple inheritance for the smbus re-work makes the chip drivers > much simpler since they don't have to explicitly list the 'parent' > methods in their method tables. The same thing goes for cardbus too. On > these lines, I went back and read through Justin's old inheritance > patches. These patches supported single inheritance for multiple > interfaces at the cost of changing the driver API considerably. I've > been tinkering with an alternative approach which supports multiple > inheritance at the class level, almost preserving the driver API while > changing the ABI slightly. Yes, please. There is the same problem with agp(4) and the hostb(4) driver and agp(4) for Intel motherboards with onboard graphics and the drm(4) driver for the same graphics chip. -- John Baldwin <>< http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/ "Power Users Use the Power to Serve!" - http://www.FreeBSD.org/