Chris Gilbert writes:
> However I believe that arm hardware may have a lot more 
> in common than other platforms, especially arm26 and arm32 on the RISC-OS 
> running systems.

Playing a bit of devils advocate... 

That seems to assume (and I have no wish to put words in anyones mouth) that 
most NetBSD+ARM users are running a RISC-OS type machine.  I don't know if 
that is true.  I, for one, am working with ARM7 & StrongARM class processors 
in embedded systems (i.e. they don't look anything like a RISC-OS machine).  
I suspect that with the vast profusion of ARM6, ARM7 & StrongARM based 
devices out there, that the real future of the NetBSD/ARM port ultimately 
lies there. 

Personally, I find the current fad to divert effort to merge support for 
arm26 interesting & quaint, but ultimately (for me) irrelevant.  Before one 
reads too much into that, I *strongly* encourage continued support for the 
old platforms.  I've got NetBSD/VAX on a VS3100m40, after all. 

Just a thought, but perhaps there needs to be an arm/riscos (or some such) 
branch for older platforms (are there any non-Acorn arm26 platforms other 
than the oddball arm26 eval board that I saw on eBay a few months back?), 
and an arm32 branch for the more modern stuff (say, non-RISC-OS ARM6 and 
above).  This would be much like the various (6, at least) Motorola 68K or 
MIPS (5, I think) NetBSD ports that rely heavily on one another for their 
core kernel functionality (MMU, FP, etc.) and toolchain, but don't make 
comprimises on peripheral support for their given target.  Hell...there are 
currently 4 branches for the Hitachi Super-H processor! 

I wouldn't want things to get this fragmented, however.  I don't think there 
are enough folks to support more than two branches. 

That's just my opinion...I could be wrong. 

Ken