Wow! This topic has generated a lot of EMail. :-)

It seems to me that the two sides of the discussion (MacOS vs NetBSD as
the side for most of the action) make convincing arguments. However
most of the negatives seem to resolve around (mostly) solved problems.

I favored MacOS as I didn't think it would be easy to mount Mac partitions
under NetBSD. Evidently this problem is half solved (not a driver, but
demonstrated).

Richard Wackerbarth <rkw@dataplex.net> & others favored getting MacBSD up
as quickly as possible & using native UNIX utilities, saving the trouble of
getting the MacOS to read ufs partitions, and keeping only one source
tree. My thought is that the MacOS has already been taught (in a tentative
manner) how to deal w/ ufs partitions, so this problem is solved.

It sounds like the best solution is a bit of all (as enthusiasm supports):

1) a booter that will fire up a MacBSD kernel, possibly mounting root off
of an hfs partition for instalation, configuration, and maintenance.
this solution would be great for an instalation kit and as a form of
maintenance mode support (like Maintenance Floppies on an RS/6K).

Thus any utilities (sh, fsck, mv, gtar) would live as MacOS files containing
the NetBSD commands (just like I ftp /bin/sh off of a UNIX box now).
Any other utilities (new gtar, diagnostics routines, etc.) need only be
maintained under MacBSD. (Richard Wackerbarth suggested this to me in a
private letter.)

2) A MacOS program that can read, write, and fsck ufs partitions. This tool
would probably not get used much, but should not need to change much.
The ufs partition definition isn't going to change, is it? All it needs
is basically what's in the installer now. It would serve three purposes:
it would get the MacBSD utilities into the MacOS partition, it would help
porting to systems MacBSD doesn't yet run on (avoids chicken-and-egg
difficulties), and the program would help get files onto the unix-side
when you don't want to go through the whole boot MacBSD/boot MacOS
sequence. It mightn't get used much, but would be good at what it does.

I think the MacBSD community would be best served by the flexability of
both solutions. :-)

Take care,

Bill