Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2001 15:25:33 -0700 From: "David O'Brien" <obrien@freebsd.org> To: Jordan Hubbard <jkh@freebsd.org> Cc: daniel.sobral@tcoip.com.br, dcs@tcoip.com.br, msmith@freebsd.org, yokota@zodiac.mech.utsunomiya-u.ac.jp, dcs@freebsd.org, current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: HEADS UP: ACPI CHANGES AFFECTING MOST -CURRENT USERS Message-ID: <20010905152533.A4524@dragon.nuxi.com> In-Reply-To: <20010905132622F.jkh@freebsd.org>; from jkh@freebsd.org on Wed, Sep 05, 2001 at 01:26:22PM -0700 References: <200109041248.f84CmOa21358@mail.tcoip.com.br> <20010905092840.B96880@dragon.nuxi.com> <3B967514.1040508@tcoip.com.br> <20010905132622F.jkh@freebsd.org>
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On Wed, Sep 05, 2001 at 01:26:22PM -0700, Jordan Hubbard wrote: > > I myself questioned the wisdom of using Forth at the time, and Jordan > > simply replied I was free to find a more popular language with a freely > > available interpreter that would fit in as small a space as FICL did. > > I also have to question the assertion that the community of people who > understand or have even a passing familiarity with this sort of thing > [a forth-based loader] is miniscule. OpenBoot, for example, is > entirely forth-based (c.f. Mitch Bradley). Every machine Sun has ever > shipped in any serious quantity has OpenBoot as its loader. Every And I don't know a *single* Sun admin (current or ex) that has ever done any OpenBoot/forth scripts. Not a *single* one. Nor does Solaris or even your own company (Apple) try to do as much in OpenBoot as we do in our loader. We often desire /boot/*.4th tweaks, but only 1-2 people have enough passing knowledge of Forth to do it. > FreeBSD is simply following an well-established trend for boot loaders > here rather than going its own way, Not really. You are speaking of machine firmware. OpenBoot loads the bootblock and provides some BIOS-like services. Our bootblocks load our FICL loader. Thus you really cannot compare the two the way you do. > and if we were to use Ruby as our > boot loader then I'm sure a lot of Japanese people would be very happy > but it would also make us utterly unique, a decision of even more > questionable wisdom. A lot more people can tweak an existing Ruby script, than an existing forth one. -- -- David (obrien@FreeBSD.org) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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