Re: netbsd-10, merging device-streams (xstreamtodev, rdbinfo)

[Roc Vallès <vallesroc%gmail.com@localhost>]

Hi David,

Thanks for the prompt reply.

On Tue, 21 Mar 2023 at 23:15, David Brownlee <abs%netbsd.org@localhost> wrote:
> I have another question :)
>
> xstreamtodev and xdevtostream are just streamtodev and devtostream
> with EXPERT_VERSION.
>
> Given that the expert versions appear to be entirely a superset (so
> the behave identically for all basic supported options other than the
> usage string), is there any need to build and or include the basic
> versions? The binaries are a few 100s of bytes larger, so its not
> likely to be useful on the basis of memory or file size.
>
> My natural inclination would be just to default to EXPERT_VERSION on
> always (or even unifdef it), and have a single set of binaries. (I
> would also probably just want to call them streamtodev and
> devtostream, but I suspect we have enough years of habit using the "x"
> prefix that its best to keep it).

This is very much the reasoning I applied. I am not a fan of this
distinction either, but thought best to avoid changing anything
user-facing beyond necessary.

Without having to look outside of netbsd, the netbsd documentation
does say to use xstreamtodev, and existing releases of netbsd used to
provide only the xstreamtodev and rdbinfo binaries in the
/amiga/installation/misc/ directory.

Tangentially related, documentation will eventually have to be updated
to reflect the current state of the port, as e.g. the install
documentation claims that it is not possible to install netbsd to
partitions above 32bit boundary due to xstreamtodev's limitations.
This no longer holds true when AmigaOS has 64bit support, and while it
is not possible to boot netbsd in such a system with bootblocks, using
loadbsd to boot a kernel from AmigaOS bypasses this. Of course, my own
install is well above 32bit, with AmigaOS and related partitions
occupying the beginning of the disk.

As I understand it, it should also be possible to update the
bootblocks to support TD64 and possibly also NSD, but it is a
considerably involved task.

With these improvements, together with the newer loadbsd, pcmcia
bugfix, Xorg support improvements on AGA and OCS/ECS chipsets, faster
decompression of package indexes and other changes, netbsd-10's amiga
port is looking good.

> David


Roc