On Wed, 9 Jan 2002 22:11:20 -0600 (CST)
Brian <lxy at cloudnet.com> wrote:

> Yes and no.  Let's say I have my m68k Mac chugging along, but I need
> some of the new Reiser stuff.  What am I supposed to do?  What if they
> stopped developing today for m68k, and 3 months from now a much needed
> patch came out.  Am I hosed?
> 
There's enough people out there who would probably run across this
issue as well, and those who code would come up with a fix.

> At the same time, I'd like it if the kernel came in an x86 only
> package, so I didn't have to download the
> RISC/S390/AS400/Sparc/Amiga/PPC/... just to build an x86 kernel (most
> users would want this).  Seems kinda silly to unpack megs of useless
> code.
> 
This is kind of what I was trying to mention.  Make a specific kernel
port for each processor type:  Alpha, Sparc, PA-RISC, Intel x86, Athlon,
Mac, etc.  Might be more work, but I think the benefits would be better
off rather than jumbling everything into one thing.  Also, you could
probably have a lot better legacy support for each specific processor
port type I'd think.

Someone (Munir?) not that long ago ran into an issue where the kernel on
their box (RH?) was compiled by default as a 386 or something other than
it was.  Yes, we all like to play at times, but I'd like to see it get
everything right on the install.


Shawn