Subject: Re: NetBSD/XEN misnamed?
To: Ignatios Souvatzis <ignatios@cs.uni-bonn.de>
From: Christian Limpach <chris@pin.lu>
List: port-xen
Date: 04/06/2004 15:35:06
Quoting Ignatios Souvatzis <ignatios@cs.uni-bonn.de>:

> from the FAQ:
> 
> "Xen currently runs on the x86 architecture, but could in principle be
> ported to others.In fact, it would have been rather easier to write
> Xen for pretty much any other architecture as x86 is particularly 
> tricky to handle."
> 
> Shouldn't NetBSD/XEN be called something like NetBSD/XEN86, so that
> e.g. a future XENamd64 would fit into the naming scheme?

I guess it depends on how important the processor architecture is.  Of
course at the binary level it's quite significant but at the source code
level it shouldn't be, I think of it more like supporting different types
of buses.  Looking at the list of ports, it doesn't seem like the processor
architecture is the primary gate for calling something a new port but the
OS-machine interface (i.e. bios, boot method, ...).  And the OS-machine
interface should the same for Xen whether it runs on i386 or amd64.

-- 
Christian Limpach <chris@pin.lu>