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Hi!

>>>>> Jonathan Stone writes:

JS> Gord Matzigkeit <gord@enci.ucalgary.ca> writes:

GM> [NetBSD/pmax is still not production quality, in any event, but
GM> I'm hoping it will be soon.]

JS> What needs to be fixed to make NetBSD/pmax production quality?

I've been ranting about these for a while now... hope you're not sick
of 'em yet. ;)

Note: I am NOT a kernel hacker.

1) PMAG-BA accelerated 2-D graphics card driver support.  I don't know
where to begin with this.  20 of our 45 5000/120's use the PMAG-BA
card, and up- or downgrading is not a possibility.

2) X11R6 server that works on PMAG-B as well as the other devices.  I
heard something about IOCTL support that would do the trick, but
nothing seems to have come of it.

3) Shared libraries.  If I had an ld that would produce shared objects
without SEGVing, then I'd just compile the GNU C library, and use
their ELF ld.so.  But, I don't know if the gcc that comes with
netbsd/pmax even does PIC.  Somebody mentioned that they have a PIC
toolchain, and were writing an ld.so, but nothing seems to have come
of it.

Until shared libraries are delivered, every library I compile
(kerberos, lesstif) feels like a waste of time, and NetBSD/pmax fills
the disk too much to warrant installing it on our tiny 5000/120's.

4) An implementation of sigstack (a missing function) for the C
library.  I reported this problem this week.

5) A GDB that can actually trace program execution.  The one in the
snapshot doesn't know what source line it is at, even for hello-world
programs compiled with -g.  I reported this before Christmas, but
nothing seems to have come of it.

6) Robust Ultrix installation instructions.  This isn't a priority for
me right now, but I may end up working on this (simply because I don't
have the right skills to handle my other nits).

7) Getting the GNU people to config.guess our canonical name as
mips-dec-netbsd1.1A rather than pmax-unknown-netbsd1.1A.  It's
irritating to have to explicitly give host parameters to the configure
command.

Thanks for asking, anyway...

--Gord
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--
   Gord Matzigkeit    | Jaques Cousteau loved programming in assembler.
gord@enci.ucalgary.ca |  PGP mail preferred... finger -l me for my key.
Keyprint: D5 66 08 E0 4D F4 D7 7B 8A C8 8A 9C 7F 39 25 A7 - ID 339ABEB9


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