looking towards 2.4

[Donald Becker]

On Tue, 21 Nov 2000, Rob Latham wrote:

> Has anyone considered porting bproc to the 2.4 kernels?  I realize
> they are in a rather mushy feature freeze, but they've got to be close
> to releasing 2.4 soon, right?

There has been at least five major interface changes to the VMA and VFS
layers since the first 2.4 "feature freeze".  Tracking those changes would
taken a few days of coding and six weeks of testing each, and most of those
changes came with a whole batch of new kernel bugs.

> As far as bproc is concerned, have the changes to the process table
> been as dramatic as those done to the network driver interface?  Will
> a port be a matter of a few tweaks or will it require a redesign?

The process table hasn't changed that much, but the VMA code went through
major upheaval.  We would be happy to see someone else do the work and
initial testing for 2.4, but you should really wait a few months to make
certain that the current pre-2.4 stands up to wide-spread use.

Donald Becker				becker@scyld.com
Scyld Computing Corporation		http://www.scyld.com
410 Severn Ave. Suite 210		Second Generation Beowulf Clusters
Annapolis MD 21403			410-990-9993