Re: hf/sf [Was Re: CVS commit: pkgsrc/misc/raspberrypi-userland]

[Alistair Crooks <agc%pkgsrc.org@localhost>]

On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 10:18:29AM -0500, Thor Lancelot Simon wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 10, 2013 at 08:38:27PM +0100, Alistair Crooks wrote:
> > 
> > But in the big picture, having hf and sf versions of a platform's
> > userland, in the year 2013, is, well, sub-optimal.  I don't think the
> 
> That seems wrong to me.  I don't think in this cases you have
> "a platform" -- you have two platforms that happen to be able to run
> some of the same code, but which do not share an ABI.
> 
> To put it this way, NetBSD on mips can run Ultrix binaries.  Should
> we simply declare Ultrix ECOFF the lowest common denominator and run
> everything else in emulation rather than native?

Not sure I follow your logic there - certainly not saying that we should
do that.

What I am asking for is a much better way of people describing the
design decisions they've taken, and for them to attempt the radical
step of documenting these decisions, and publishing them, so that
people can understand why these decisions were taken.  This would go a
long way towards alleviating the WTF moments that we've all been
experiencing just recently.

To put this another way - someone has a Beaglebone - what userland
should they be looking for - hf, sf?  Beyond that - earm or arm?  How
do people find out what chip is in an embedded appliance?  What web
page documents the choices of ARM NetBSD userland right now, let alone
how to work out where to get them once they know they want a hf earm?
How would they specify that in building packages from pkgsrc?

I'm concerned that you think that what we have right now is workable.

Regards,
Alistair