Porting status and updates

["Cherry G. Mathew" <cherry.g.mathew%gmail.com@localhost>]

Hello Folks,

Its good to be talking on port-ia64 at last! :-)

I don't have CVS access to the NetBSD repository, yet, so I think
we're going to be working in diff-patch-build mode.

Here's a rough outline of what I've been upto, and what I hope to do
over the next few months.

Development Environment:

- The ia64 build toolchian works. Many Thanks to Nick Hudson for help with that.
- The ski emulator has been packaged up for NetBSD-i386. There are a
few rough edges which need polishing off, and it would be good to have
it added to the pkgsrc collection.

Bootstrap:

- The efi bootcode has been compiled cleanly once upon a time, but
requires some cleanups.
- The ski bootcode works properly, handsoff cleanly to the kernel. But
it is buggy.

Kernel:

- All of the machine dependant functions are currently empty. Console
output via ski works. There's lots of work to be done here.

I'm currently implementing the pmap layer. The immediate goal is to
get it "Just working" which essentially means that the module is going
to have a lot of FreeBSD code. Later, I intend to update it with
variable page size support. All other tasks are open as of now, and
you're welcome to contribute. It would good to get help with the efi
boot code and h/w console support for actual ia64 h/w as I don't have
access to ia64 h/w at the moment to try these things out.

For a more organised status, do have a look at http://cherry.beevomit.org/netbsd

Cheers,

--
~Cherry