(Illustration by Gaich Muramatsu)
On Wed, Apr 02, 2003 at 09:32:25AM -0500, Greg Troxel wrote: > Perhaps coda support should be removed from the BSD base systems and > have to be a module, like xfs for arla. That would address the > .h/code consistency issue. I think it's unlikely that removing Coda support from the FreeBSD base system would improve anything -- without meaning to offend, I don't think the Coda developers would be able to maintain the kernel code, given that But the current situation is that (except for mechanical changes due to global interface changes in the kernel) the coda developers do need to maintain the kernel code. Right now, it seems like I'm the de facto maintainer of coda in NetBSD. The other people speaking up and helping me on tech-kern_at_netbsd.org have been vfs experts, not coda types. But, having the coda kernel code in the base system is helpful, since the other interfaces that the code uses (vfs) are defined by the rest of the kernel. In arla, there is source for a kernel module xfs, presumably for multiple operating systems, that comes with the arla sources. This makes it a lot eaiser to change the interface, because the /dev/xfs0 (like our /dev/cfs0) interface is then a private interface to the software package, rather than a defined interface of the operating system. With this approach, it is reasonable to say 'update venus and kernel module together'. It's harder to say this with the coda support in the base system, since then you get into patches. I am beginning to think that having patches available to bring the kernel interface up to realms would be good, and perhaps those would come by default in some future BSD versions, with patches/#ifdef to revert them. I'm low on copious spare time this week; let me think about this since I've wanted to run realms for a long time. even the userland parts (venus etc.) do not compile "out of the box" on any recent FreeBSD release (4.7, 4.8, 5.0). Otherwise it would be good: less code for FreeBSD developers to maintain, easier for Coda developers to update/keep in sync with other platforms. Does -current coda really not build on 4-stable? I haven't rebuilt in a while on my FreeBSD box, which is tracking 4-stable.Received on 2003-04-02 13:38:19