Hi,

although I am not a member of core, I'll speak up anyway.  I can
sympathize with those who think there should be some form of buy-in,
at least to the general direction of importing CAM to NetBSD.  I,
for one, would like to see it happen, for at least a couple of
different reasons:

 o Support for newer HBAs (e.g. the newer aic7xxx chips which
   started this particular discussion)

 o Better code sharing with FreeBSD, the hope being that
   development resources can be more efficiently used

 o Better error recovery in SCSI (from what I understand)

Granted, there are quite a number of obstacles to overcome before we
would reach the stage where the code could be imported "for real",
some of them listed by Jason in an earlier message in this thread.
However, I do not see them as insurmountable obstacles (hah! easy
for me to say... ;-).  If the FreeBSD folks are even kind enough to
supply us with better documentation for their CAM stuff that should
make porting and/or adapting older HBA drivers even easier.

> I think there are 3 scenarios here:
>
> 1	If the general consensus of NetBSD core is that this should be
> 	the way to go (import CAM into NetBSD), then people will commit
> 	the time to make it happen.
>
> 2	If the general consensus of NetBSD core is "do the work first and
> 	then we'll see", it probably won't happen.
>
> 3	If the general consensus of NetBSD core is "We think this is a
> 	good idea, but in the process of importing this into NetBSD make
> 	sure that the code quality and design improves so it meets *our*
> 	standards", it *might* happen.
>
> The only opinion from NetBSD core I've heard is from Jason (I believe- and
> he's a core member until today I guess)- and that opinion was #2. I
> believe that #3 is the best compromise scenario- I'm all for very high
> standards of design and quality, but since software is such an inherently
> improvisational art form, there's often a notion of buying into designs
> that are moving targets.

I read a #3 out of David Carrel's message, and I'm not sure that I
read a #2 out of Jason's.  From my point of view that is encouraging. ;-)


Regards, and best wishes for the New Year,

- H=E5vard