Subject: Re: Relevance of ARM merge (was: Re: port-arm26 and port-arm32 into port-arm mailing list)
To: Chris Gilbert <chris@paradox.demon.co.uk>
From: Stephen Borrill <netbsd@precedence.co.uk>
List: port-arm32
Date: 02/14/2001 15:18:10
>  If we've got arm26 and arm32 then we might as well have armT when someone 
> starts porting to thumb devices.  (anyone fancy netbsd in there Epoc device :)

That was another project that seemed to disappear. I quite fancied NetBSD
on my Psion 5.
 
> The effort is to provide support for ELF across all arm platforms.  Bearing 
> in mind that this will bring ELF onto arm32 I see that as a plus.  Currently 
> Ben seems to be doing a fair amount of work on this front (I believe that 
> others would help but lack the time, knowledge or other commitments stops 
> them), and he's the arm26 port-master.  Perhaps you've also missed the fact 
> that ben has done some improvements to both the arm32 and arm26 ports to 
> actually merge them together.
[snip]
> arm32 lacks an active port-master, However we probably don't have anyone
> with the knowledge that Mark had to be port-master. 
[snip]
> Perhaps ben should be considering if he wants to merge with a port
> that's not been seriously worked on for at least a year?

Yes, Ben is doing a sterling job. arm26 is never going to be widely used
though. Obviously, arm32 is the future of NetBSD on ARM. It's not a big
leap to see Ben doing more and more on arm32 (especially if we get a
merged userland/toolchain). Recently we've got more kernel hackers than
we've ever had before, perhaps the time is ripe for a new portmaster (or
at least an acting portmaster). It's a big responsibility to ask anyone to
take on, but my 0.02ukp is that Ben is the obvious choice (if he's
willing). I could be persuaded to donate RiscPC/CATS hardware. 

> Most people aren't interested in the NetBSD/arm32 port now, linux is the one 
> with all the hype and all the cool new toys ported to.

Let's get Linux/arm binary emulation sorted out then. OK, that's separate
from porting to new bits of hardware, but there are binary-only
distributions of software that it would be really useful to run on
NetBSD/arm32.

-- 
Stephen