Return to BSD News archive
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.rmit.EDU.AU!news.unimelb.EDU.AU!munnari.OZ.AU!news.hawaii.edu!ames!usenet.kornet.nm.kr!news.kreonet.re.kr!usenet.seri.re.kr!news.cais.net!ringer.cs.utsa.edu!swrinde!howland.reston.ans.net!nntp.crl.com!pacbell.com!amdahl.com!news.fujitsu.com!nntp-sc.barrnet.net!netapp.com!netapp.com!not-for-mail From: guy@netapp.com (Guy Harris) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.solaris,comp.unix.aix,comp.unix.advocacy Subject: Re: ISP hardware/software choices (performance comparison) Followup-To: comp.unix.advocacy Date: 19 Jan 1996 17:33:11 -0800 Organization: Network Appliance Lines: 28 Distribution: inet Message-ID: <4dpgon$d4m@bayonne.netapp.com> References: <4cmopu$d35@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> <4dg90i$6le@mail.fwi.uva.nl> <4dh42v$rnv@park.uvsc.edu> <4djgkh$kgn@Jester.CC.MsState.Edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: 192.9.200.18 Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:2056 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:2214 comp.unix.solaris:57880 comp.unix.aix:69220 comp.unix.advocacy:13423 (Followups to "comp.unix.advocacy".) Frank Peters <fwp@Jester.CC.MsState.Edu> wrote: >Fact: A major reason given for dropping support for these architectures > was dropped from later 4.x releases was the difficulty of > maintaining the 4.x code base for them. 4.x source wasn't > written with the portability constraints needed to support > several architectures from the same code base. Maintaining > multiple architectures in a practical fashion would have required > a major rewrite of the 4.x code. As somebody who worked in the OS group at Sun from 1985 to 1988, I can state that the above simply isn't true. The 4.x code base was actually structured quite well to support multiple architectures from the same code base; it was reorganized for 4.0 to make that work better. The 386i source didn't come from the same code base, but that was because it was being done on the other side of North America, and because the 386i developers made a number of changes they presumably thought were important for the market for their machine, and that weren't bought back by the West Coast group. I'd really like to hear whoever from Sun claimed that they dropped support for the *68K* from 4.x because of "the difficulty of maintaining the 4.x code base for them" explain precisely how the 4.x source made this difficult. I sure hope it wasn't some marketoon or PR person who wouldn't have known a HAT layer if one came up and bit them in the ass....