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Hi...

>>>>> Jonathan Stone writes:

JS> Executive Summary:

JS> I honestly don't know what's broken in half of Gordon's points,
JS> and the other half are outside my control, or beyond my time
JS> constraints to fix...

Okay... my apologies... I should have gone to bed last night and tried
posting in the morning.  Then my note wouldn't have been seething with
frustration.  Half the problems I'm having are because my boss isn't
allowing me even 1/3 of the time I told him was required to get NetBSD
fully integrated for our labs.

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

JS> I don't understand this request at all.  Are you sure you mean the
JS> PMAG-BA and not something else?

No... my mistake.  I meant PMAG-C.

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

JS> If you want it, write it :).

Is there any nice way to implement the Xws code so that we don't need
to modify R6?  That's what I was really asking, and that's something I
don't know how to begin doing.

JS> Per Fogelstrom (pefo@enea.se) was working on this.

JS> Per has a GCC and a binutils that builds ELF PIC mips objects.
JS> Why don't you see if you can get that, and try building a shared
JS> GNU libc with it?

I was hoping to do that, but Per didn't respond to my email.
Possibly, it didn't make it over the Atlantic. :(

JS> In fact, Per, can you send it to me and I'll put the binaries in
JS> the next snapshot I make?

That would be good, too.

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

>> From the NetBSD manpage for sigstack():

>> SIGSTACK(2) NetBSD Programmer's Manual SIGSTACK(2)
>> 
>> NAME sigstack - set and/or get signal stack context
>> 
>> DESCRIPTION The sigstack() function has been deprecated in favor of
>> the interface de- scribed in sigaltstack(2).
>> 
>> SEE ALSO sigaltstack(2)

That's the problem of writing at 0200, I forget to RTFM. :/

JS> As far as I can tell, no NetBSD port provides sigstack().  At
JS> least, I can't find one anywhere in /usr/src/libc.  It's present
JS> in kernels only for binary compatibility.  Perhaps you should
JS> write a library version of sigstack() for your application, using
JS> sigaltstack?

JS> If you think NetBSD should have such a library routine, then
JS> please send a PR about libc.  I don't know how the relevant people
JS> (probably JT Conklin, amongst others) would respond to such a
JS> request.  I can see arguments in favour of stamping out old,
JS> pre-posix 4bsd interfaces in favour of POSIX interfaces.

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

JS> Uh...  it seems to for me ?!?.  That I will look into.

This is either a vapour bug from my 0200 imagination, or I'll get a
nicer bug report to you.  Don't bother looking into it until I'm
actually sure it still doesn't work.

JS> What are the flaws with either set of instructions (Arne's or
JS> mine), what are they *missing*, and where could they be improved?

I'll be finding that, once I get time to (probably in the next week or
so).  I do like Arne's instructions, but I haven't had a chance to try
them out yet.

JS> If someone has suggestions, I'd be glad to add material.  But I
JS> can't fix something if I don't know it's broken.

I understand that... my adding that point was probably caused more by
0200 post-lay-off frustration than by an actual deficiency.

GM> 7) Getting the GNU people to config.guess our canonical name as
GM> mips-dec-netbsd1.1A rather than pmax-unknown-netbsd1.1A.

I wasn't thinking here.  I meant:

"Consolidating all the pmax ports people have done."

Can somebody please post (or archive) patches they have done for, eg,
the X server, GCC, GDB, binutils, in one place, so we know what's been
done and what remains to be done?

JS> You're welcome.  However, I simply cannot single-handedly support
JS> and enhance all of NetBSD/pmax on my own.  I can completely
JS> understand that the user community would like to see more support
JS> and more functionality for NetBSD/pmax.  So would I.  However,
JS> that has to come *from* the user community.  I simply do not have
JS> time to do more than I'm doing already.

I do appreciate the tremendous effort you've put in, as well as
everybody else's... I do hope to get more involved, but I've felt like
work that I can help with was being done (i.e. shared libraries,
implementation of Xws, porting other software to pmax) that people
have simply not reported to the list or answered in private email, and
so I felt pretty useless.  I'm hoping we can synchronize more.

Thanks again for your reply,

--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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