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Date:      Thu, 26 Nov 1998 14:19:15 -0600
From:      Erik Cameron <ecameron@bsd.uchicago.edu>
To:        Gary Palmer <gpalmer@FreeBSD.ORG>
Cc:        Eivind Eklund <eivind@yes.no>, eddy@ISI.EDU, Paolo Di Francesco <paipai@tin.it>, freebsd-sparc@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: What we need
Message-ID:  <19981126141915.B6011@bsd.uchicago.edu>
In-Reply-To: <28778.912110828@gjp.erols.com>; from Gary Palmer on Thu, Nov 26, 1998 at 03:07:08PM -0500
References:  <19981126131454.A5740@bsd.uchicago.edu> <28778.912110828@gjp.erols.com>

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On the subject of getting a booting kernel, I agree...  As far
as getting userland working and compiled, though, libc is pretty
important...  :)  Which is what we were discussing.  I agree that
a booting kernel would be of far more use, but everybody's gotta
do something...  What's your feeling on crosscompiling from a 
FreeBSD/intel machine?

-e


On Thu, Nov 26, 1998 at 03:07:08PM -0500, Gary Palmer wrote:
> Erik Cameron wrote in message ID
> <19981126131454.A5740@bsd.uchicago.edu>:
> > 
> > The real problem I've found with this is is the (relatively) large 
> > amount of assembly code involved in building libc; libc being the 
> > first thing to work on, IMHO.  
> 
> From memory, half the assembly stuff in libc is optimized versions of 
> speed-critical components (ntohl,bcopy, etc). I seem to remember their being C 
> versions as well. This isn't true for everything (such as the syscall 
> interface), but it cuts down on the ammount of work that needs to be done.
> A bunch of the .S files you see being compiled/assembled when you make libc 
> are syscall veneers that are machine generated from a single copy of the file. 
> So, yes, assembly is required to build libc, but not as much as you might 
> think. And to be perfectly honest, the biggest hurdle is going to be the 
> kernel, not libc, and I think thats where your focus should be. You can boot 
> and debug a kernel without ever needing a libc.
> 
> Gary
> --
> Gary Palmer                                          FreeBSD Core Team Member
> FreeBSD: Turning PC's into workstations. See http://www.FreeBSD.ORG/ for info
> 
> 

-- 
erik cameron -- bsd/is support services
support engineer, unix frood, sysadmin, etc.
ecameron@bsd.uchicago.edu | karl is silly  

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