Re: Path to kmods

[Manuel Bouyer <bouyer%antioche.eu.org@localhost>]

On Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 12:00:26PM +0000, Andrew Doran wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 05:27:30PM +0100, Hubert Feyrer wrote:
> 
> > So, I wonder if we should change /netbsd to a directory that has the 
> > actual kernel plus the modules that are associated with that specific 
> > (actual) kernel.
> 
> The problem with this proprosal is that it espouses the notion that modules
> are tied to a specific kernel.
> 
> It's possible that Linux and FreeBSD work this way - I don't know. In our
> case, kernel modules are not tied to a specific kernel compliation. A great
> deal of work has been done over the last 2.5 years to make that the case.

But they are different for different MACHINE. And different MACHINE (or even
different MACHINE_ARCH, e.g. sparc vs sparc64) kernels
can boot the same userland (a good amount of work has also been done to
allow this). If we want to make it possible to share modules across
different MACHINEs of the same MACHINE_ARCH we have to redefine the
kenrel API in this direction. 

-- 
Manuel Bouyer, LIP6, Universite Paris VI.           
Manuel.Bouyer%lip6.fr@localhost
     NetBSD: 26 ans d'experience feront toujours la difference
--