Subject: Re: NetBSD-Mach?
To: Jason Thorpe <thorpej@nas.nasa.gov>
From: The Great Mr. Kurtz [David A. Gatwood] <davagatw@Mars.utm.edU>
List: port-mac68k
Date: 12/09/1996 19:08:35
On Mon, 9 Dec 1996, Jason Thorpe wrote:

> On Mon, 9 Dec 1996 13:55:55 -0600 (CST) 
>  "The Great Mr. Kurtz [David A. Gatwood]" <davagatw@Mars.utm.edU> wrote:
> 
>  > I'm curious.  I know somebody has a Lites-based server out there to run on
>  > top of the Mach3 Microkernel (of MkLinux fame), which brings a few 
>  > questions to mind:
>  > 
>  > 1.	Is anyone working on/planning to work on a port of NetBSD to
>  > Mach3?
> 
> Actually porting NetBSD to Mach would be almost pointless.  NetBSD is
> a standalone kernel.  A better approach is to port NetBSD to the hardware,
> possibly using some code from Mach.

That makes sense, but if the Mach Microkernel is available on a platform,
it certainly makes for a quick port after the initial coding (i.e. porting
to future platforms that support Mach3 would simply involve a recompile,
and I suspect the mach3 platform list will grow very quickly for this
reason.)   Also, the ability of Mach to run multiple servers would, in
theory, allow one to basically run two OS'es side-by-side, for instance
Linux and NetBSD... or eventually... MacOS and NetBSD.

Another advantage of Mach: no booter coding.  :-)  And who knows...
NetBSD-mach may be darn-near hopeless.  If so, I'll look at a monolithic
possibility.  No matter what, though, this will be an interesting
experiment in coding.  :-)

Cheers,

 /---------------------------------------------------------------------\
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|davagatw@mars              Went home and put a bullet through his head.|
|dgatwood@nyx.cs.du.edu              --Edwin Arlington Robinson         |
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