Re: Status of revivesa

[Mindaugas Rasiukevicius <rmind%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

Izumi Tsutsui <tsutsui%ceres.dti.ne.jp@localhost> wrote:
> christos%astron.com@localhost wrote:
> 
> > >I wonder if the binary compatibility for pthread is
> > >a serious showstopper, i.e. it's really more important
> > >than other new features like MPsafe syscalls or
> > >WAPBL etc. for most ordinary users.
> > 
> > >Can't we defer revivesa to 5.1, as fixsa on 4.1?
> > >Users who actually need working SA support could use
> > >(forthcomming) 4.1 with fixsa and I guess there are
> > >quite few such users.
> > 
> > Once you release 5.0 without revive-sa you have screwed the users
> > who want to upgrade from 4.x to 5.0. Adding it to 5.1 or announcing
> > that you are going to add it in 5.1 wil just hurt the adoption of
> > 5.0 or just hurt the users who will not wait.
> 
> In the perfect world?
> 
> How many users will actually be screwed seriously with SA,
> rather than pleased by advantages on other features?
> 
> Which actual application is expected to be run on 5.0 with revivesa
> in the real world?  Is it really expected to work without any benchmark?

We had accidentally broken libpthread compatibility (after move of some
functionality to librt) in -current. It was noticed 6 months later, by one
developer. So extent of the problem is probably not that large.

Perhaps world wont collapse if we will break compatibility once in many
years (by documenting that clearly and loudly), for a serious reason - to
throw away broken implementation, and thus clean up our kernel.

-- 
Best regards,
Mindaugas
www.NetBSD.org