Re: Regarding the ULTRIX and OSF1 compats

[John Nemeth <jnemeth%cue.bc.ca@localhost>]

On Mar 10, 12:16pm, Maxime Villard wrote:
} Le 10/03/2019 à 11:25, Björn Johannesson a écrit :
} >
} > COMPAT_ULTRIX (mips) works fine which I recently discovered after shuffling
} > some disks and NetBSD8 mounted the ULTRIX disk as /
} 
} This more likely means that it was an old UFS disk that we do support by
} default in our UFS/FFS code, but I hardly see how this could be related to
} COMPAT_ULTRIX.

     I'm assuming here that he actually ran at least some of the
binaries.  Of course, it is possible that my assumption might be
mistaken.

     But, this does raise good, albeit separate, point that it
would be a bad idea to remove support for older versions of FFS.

} Which MIPS are you talking about by the way? Pmax I guess? Because
} COMPAT_ULTRIX is disabled on the majority of our MIPSs.
} 
} > Not that I have terribly much use for it (except maybe maple) but I would
} > still like it to be kept in.
} 
} I would tend to think that a good reason needs to go a bit farther than just
} "I'd like to keep it in"...

     Maybe so, but the onus is on the person wanting to do the
deletion to provide a good reason.  If COMPAT_ULTRIX is just a thin
shim on top of COMPAT_43 as somebody else has said, then is it
really causing a problem? As for lack of maintenance, it isn't a
moving target, so it only needs maintenance to keep up with related
changes to other parts of the kernel.

} When it comes to Maple, it is already available on Linux, and we do have
} COMPAT_LINUX.

     True, but COMPAT_LINUX is a moving target, and COMPAT_LINUX
has fallen behind significantly.  It is well known that many modern
Linux binaries won't run.

} In fact, nowadays, the vast majority of proprietary binaries compiled on
} UNIX-like systems are available on Linux, and we do support Linux emulation,
} so we're covered for the most part.

     Not exactly.

}-- End of excerpt from Maxime Villard