Date: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 04:36:40 -0800 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: Jason Evans <jasone@canonware.com> Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Beginning SPARC port Message-ID: <26799.881843800@time.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 10 Dec 1997 08:56:25 PST." <Pine.LNX.3.95.971205141315.20201G-100000@paladio>
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> As has been alluded to in some of Jordan Hubbard's email, Sun > Microelectronics (SME, the processor division of Sun) recently discussed > paying FreeBSD core to officially support a port of FreeBSD to SPARC. Great! I'd almost concluded that this had just faded away again, and it's good to hear that SME didn't just give up when we were unable to find any available personnel here. We'll certainly do our best to support your efforts as various issues come up! > full-time employee of SME, and estimate that I can spend 30-35 hours per > week of my work week on the SPARC FreeBSD porting effort (plus whatever > personal time I spend). Ah, so that really means you're good for at least 60 hours a week then! Good man! Real dedication! ;-) > This is a wonderful opportunity for me, as it is for the FreeBSD community > in general. I'm getting paid real money to do this, so I have no problems > with devoting time to the project. My additional duties here at SME Sounds like a winning formula to me. I guess you're probably going to want to start with the compiler issues first then, eh? Peter? Soren? John Polstra? You might wish to step forward and shake hands with Jason here, guys, because he's probably going to be the principal motive force behind your toolchain upgrade in -current! :-) > That said, I'll probably inadvertently ask a lot of questions that will > make you think, "This guy's trying to port an OS?!" Feel free to point Don't worry, we'd be thinking that no matter *who* you were. It's a big job. :-) Seriously, ask away. Like I said, we'll do our best. > 1) Is it possible with cvsup to maintain my own source tree with my > modifications, yet stay synched with current, so that once I have the > kernel running, I can submit a single update to the current tree (or have > someone with write access do it for me)? Yes, you can, but it's not immediately trivial since you need to make sure that your own changes are checked in along a branch that won't have its RCS ID collide with anything coming up behind you, so to speak, in the main tree. There is some early support for this in both CVS and CVSup, but I can't remember the full procedures involved. Didn't somebody document the procedure in a message to -hackers once, perhaps Peter? Help me out here, guys! :-) > 2) Supposing that 1) is possible, does it make more sense to simply grab > current once, port it to SPARC, then deal with merging it back into > current? This would be one major effort, versus constant small efforts to > stay current. I think your idea of trying to actively track -current, as occasionally rocky a road as that might sometimes be, is the superior option. Like I said, there will be a lot of up-front toolchain issues to deal with and it's quite possible that an updated toolchain could become both SPARC and x86 aware (and hence a default part of current) long before you ever actually run FreeBSD on a SPARC. By tracking -current, you could fight that battle once and then stop worrying about it since it would be integrated into your working sources automatically. > 3) Again supposing that 1) is possible, is it additionally feasible to > have multiple people working on my local tree with some sort of revision > control? Absolutely. Assuming that you've done all that's required to prevent collision (and again, it's going to take Peter or John P to more fully answer that question) you can use the full CVS command set to manage your tree there. You could even set up a local cvsupd and offer it to others via cvsup, allowing your repository to be replicated in the same manner as ours is. > I haven't asked anyone about getting write access to the source tree. > Perhaps that is better discussed in private email. I'm not yet sure > whether I need access to get any work done. If so, is there a rite of > passage? =) Well, I don't think you'll need it for awhile so it's probably premature to discuss it in any case, but the only "rite of passage" we really have is simply the process of getting to know one another and seeing that the "commit bit" is merited. That just takes a little time. I'll be following this whole sub-project with some interest, myself! Jordan
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