Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: Linux headed for disaster? | From | Jes Sorensen <> | Date | 06 Dec 1999 09:56:00 +0100 |
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>>>>> "Kendall" == Kendall Bennett <KendallB@scitechsoft.com> writes:
Kendall> Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote: >> Not really. The binary format is dependant on compiler, >> architecture, SMPness and a dozen other things. The source is not.
Kendall> As I said above, all these problems are solveable. You can Kendall> solve these problems easily by making sure your interfaces Kendall> handle things correctly. There are ways to normalise Kendall> differences between compilers, and compatibility tests are Kendall> what you should use to check this.
Kendall> Take XFree86 4.0 for instance. They support binary loadable Kendall> modules and they don't have these problems.
First major thing XFree does not have to deal with is SMP, the API for threaded applications in user space is independant of whether a system is a multi processor box or not ... this is not the case of the kernel. There are two ways to get around this in the kernel, one to call a regular function which then knows whether to play spin lock or just return or make the inline spin lock macros much bigger ... both will cause unnecessary overhead and latency.
Please tell me why we should even bother wasting our time on this issue just to make a minority of vendors happy who still naiively believe that revealing source to drive their hardware makes competitors able to copy it. The only other reasonable explanation here is that those vendors are embarrassed about the quality of their code.
Jes
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