Re: Debian GNU/(k)NetBSD and sparc32 hardware?
Hi,
Ulrich Teichert <krypton@ulrich-teichert.org> writes:
> What we've seen here is classic bitrot, IMHO. Of course, the main Linux
> development platform is x86 and quite a lot kernel developers only work
> on one platform. This has introduced bugs for all other ports (and will
> continue to do so), which I can understand. Just look at the amount of
> patches between 2.6.21 and 2.6.22.
Sure, a huge amount of work is being done in between versions, but that
new "stable" releases introduce such significant regressions strikes me
as a questionable release policy. Of course, developing an OS kernel is
a hard task, especially when so many architectures have to be supported,
but still.
Anyway, I just discovered the Linux Test Project:
http://ltp.sourceforge.net/
I guess we, users of those "non economically valuable" architectures,
should commit to run LTP every once in a while on latest kernels and
report any problems. That might be an improvement given that kernel
developers do not seem to run it.
> I'm not following NetBSD so closely, so please correct me when something
> I write isn't true, but I am under the impression that NetBSD has not
> got that much devoted kernel hackers as Linux. As a result, the process
> of bitrotting is slower with NetBSD. But NetBSD has a totally different
> approach to ports as Linux, just because the motives behind NetBSD are
> different. And maybe these reasons will suite debian@sparc32 better,
> I don't know.
Disclaimer: I'm not familiar with NetBSD either, I've never used it
actually. I just quickly browsed the web site and mailing list
archives, which gave me the impression that when they claim that
platform X is supported, it is indeed supported.
Nevertheless, you might be right in that bitrotting is just slower on
NetBSD than on Linux, it's hard to tell.
Thanks,
Ludovic.
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