From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Dec 17 21:53:18 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id VAA20882 for hackers-outgoing; Wed, 17 Dec 1997 21:53:18 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers) Received: from ns.mt.sri.com (sri-gw.MT.net [206.127.105.141]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id VAA19908 for ; Wed, 17 Dec 1997 21:35:03 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from nate@mt.sri.com) Received: from mt.sri.com (rocky.mt.sri.com [206.127.76.100]) by ns.mt.sri.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id WAA13528; Wed, 17 Dec 1997 22:11:12 -0700 (MST) (envelope-from nate@rocky.mt.sri.com) Received: by mt.sri.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id WAA15280; Wed, 17 Dec 1997 22:11:09 -0700 Date: Wed, 17 Dec 1997 22:11:09 -0700 Message-Id: <199712180511.WAA15280@mt.sri.com> From: Nate Williams MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: Terry Lambert Cc: nate@mt.sri.com (Nate Williams), daniel_sobral@voga.com.br, hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Why so many steps to build new kernel? In-Reply-To: <199712180317.UAA07959@usr07.primenet.com> References: <199712172234.PAA14402@mt.sri.com> <199712180317.UAA07959@usr07.primenet.com> X-Mailer: VM 6.29 under 19.15 XEmacs Lucid Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > What you have asked for is actually a hell of a lot more work than > just supplying the patches... it's basically an explanation of the > reasoning behind my FS worldview, and why I approach solving FS > problems the way I do, and exactly what makes me think something > is a problem or not. I never said it wasn't work. But, much *less* so than making a compiler work that much faster or generate measurably faster code, which takes a *LOT* nowadays. We're not comparing 'apply these patches' vs. 'explain FS design'. We're comparing 'volunteering a bunch of FreeBSD volunteers to re-write LKM, move to ELF, build pageable kernels, build faster compilers, implement VM86, change the way swap is allocated, make the kernel's locking much more fine-grained, architecture independant build system, etc...'. > I have to actually block out a large chunk of time to be able to do > this in a way that isn't half-assed. See above. For useful/robust solutions to the above, a person needs large chunks of time to keep everything straight, since at least a portion of the above problems are at least as complex in terms of keeping lots of things straight. Nate