Re: Re^2: NetBSD-Mach?

[Jason Thorpe <thorpej%nas.nasa.gov@localhost>]

[ Again, let's keep powerpc threads on port-powerpc, please ]

On Tue, 10 Dec 1996 18:51:43 -0600 (CST) 
 "The Great Mr. Kurtz [David A. Gatwood]" <davagatw%Mars.utm.edU@localhost> 
wrote:

 > Binary compatibility - probably  x86 only... and certainly not on
 > the Powermacs (no NetBSD port as of yet to be compatible with).

"BZZT."  NetBSD/powerpc.  If one powerpc port's binaries are incompatible
with another's, it's because of a bug.

 > Speaking of binaries... what about NetBSD-powerpc binaries?  Any chance of
 > inherent native binary compatibility without all sorts of hell?  What
 > sections of the arch-specific code describe binary formats?

If it's compatibility with Linux binaries, you have some re-engineering
of COMPAT_LINUX to do... Because of Linux's "design", they have
different syscall numbers, errno values, etc. for each of their
supported platforms.  You have to deal with this in the compatibility
code.

 > Yes lites exists, no, I've never heard of anyone using it.  I think
 > the NetBSD name and affiliation of a server would actually make it
 > competitive against Linux, especially if the installation were simple
 > enough.  With some work, I'd say it would be possible to make Mach3 handle
 > the NetBSD style ufs (or is it ffs?) file system, and then you could use
 > the existing mac68k mac-side stuff (mkfs, installer), far more mature than
 > the stuff with MkLinux for powermac.

There's probably a reason for that... I'd go as far as to say that Mach
is a cool research OS (and, that's what it is; a research OS), but
I'm hesitant to base production servers and workstations on it.

Jason R. Thorpe                                       
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