Subject: Re: vm/vm.h
To: None <port-arm32@netbsd.org,chris@buzzbee.freeserve.co.uk>
From: Ben Harris <bjh21@netbsd.org>
List: port-arm32
Date: 07/16/2000 11:24:15
In article <3970F23A.D8B0A4C0@buzzbee.freeserve.co.uk> you write:
>One interesting thing I saw was mention of getting elf support working
>on arm32, I'm not sure how much work it would be, but I believe it does
>have some advantages?

From my experience on arm26, the actual software effort in converting to ELF
will be minimal once NetBSD imports binutils-2.10.  Of course, it's likely
to be a little trickier if you have to maintain binary-compatibility with
old releases and get all the users across the chasm safely, which is why I
did it early.

>Another thought that crossed my mind would be how easily integrateable
>are the arm26 and arm32 trees, I'm sure most of the standard library
>code can be shared?  Probably not the core kernel stuff though.

That's roughly how I see it.  I've tried to minimise divergence in libc and
libkern so that it should be possible to merge the two if someone on the
arm32 side wants to help.  I have, admittedly, completely replaced the
soft-float bits of libc, mostly because I needed to do that in order to be
able to fix the structure-passing stuff in the compiler.  I suspect a
merged lib/libc/arch/arm and sys/lib/libkern/arch/arm should be possible.

I'd also like to produce a merged sys/dev/podulebus, but I think that'll
take a little more effort, since I've put more emphasis on getting things
right than on being compatible there.

-- 
Ben Harris                                                   <bjh21@netbsd.org>
Portmaster, NetBSD/arm26               <URL:http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/arm26/>