Re: Synology DS109+ booting NetBSD (to root prompt)

Frank Wille <[email protected]> writes:

> Greg Toxel wrote:
>
>> Why do we have to have so many different 'arches'?  I get it that some
>> processor families are different enough that one can't
>> (currently/easily) build a single kernel that supports both, but I
>> think we already have that, and I don't see the benefit of splitting to
>> many.
>
> What is the disadvantage in having many ports?
> Changes in the MI kernel interfaces would have to be updated in more places?

Basically that each port is cognitive load, and something that should
have a build.sh task in the build server that looks for failures.  In
the limit we'd have hundreds, and that seems unreasonable.

> I'm not sure if that really would be the case. When everything is in evbppc,
> you also have to check and fix several files and directories.

Sure, but there are fewer things to do, I think.

>> I could see ppc vs ppce (booke ppc), but I'm boggled by evbpcc
>> and nasppc being different.  What's the reason it can't fit in one?
>
> IMHO not only the CPU architecture decides about a port, but also common
> aspects in the rest of the hardware (e.g. Amiga vs. Atari vs. Mac68k),
> especially when you have lots of devices which only exist for a single
> architecture. Also similar firmwares or bootloaders might play a role
> (U-Boot, OFW, etc.).

I can see that big things were are really fundamental making a port (OFW
vs U-Boot) being a sensible guide.  But having devices present on one
board vs another seems not so important, especially if one could imagine
building boards with different sets.

> And yes, BOOKE is so different that I would vote for a separate port (maybe
> including 440). :)

But yet it's in the same port now, just with a kernel.  

My overall take is that if two systems can just be separate kernels in a
single port, that's better than having two ports, as long as it doesn't
hurt.

But I haven't really been dealing with the details, so I could be off.

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