Re: [MiNT] What's in, what's out?

[Odd Skancke <oskancke@online.no>]

 Hi, Julian,

On Mon, 22 Nov 1999, Julian Reschke wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> in the last weeks there have been some discussions about what should be in
> the kernel, and what changes that affect backwards compatibility are ok and
> which are not.
> 
> Before proceeding, let's be clear about the fact that Frank Naumann has
> every freedom to add/change the kernel in whatever way he likes -- if
> somebody disagrees, (s)he can fork the kernel development.
> 
> But obviously nobody wants THAT to happen, so how can we prevent it?
> 
> a) by trying to keep things outside the kernel and to move them into
> loadable modules instead (the discussion about a new /kern comes to mind),
> 
> b) by trying to prevent feature and opcode creep,
> 
> c) by not doing changes that break compatibility without having a broad
> agreement on that,
> 
> d) by discussing new APIs before it's too late (for instance, a function
> that reads system variables and returns the value in d0 is A Very Bad Thing,
> because you can't detect EINVAL reliably).
> 
> To name a recent example, we had a discussion whether we actually need a new
> signal to enable an UPS daemon to inform "init" about a power problem. It
> was discovered, that, yes, we can add a signal for that but it's the very
> last that's free. As far as I remember, no powerful argument was given why
> we need to sacrifice this last unused signal for that purpose. I think that
> discussions like this need to be finished before changes make it actually
> into a release kernel.
> 
> Please remember -- the measure for the quality of a kernel is not the number
> of features. And, in my opinion, a MiNT that gets bigger and bigger just to
> be closer to Linux is a waste of time -- if I would *want* Linux, I would
> just use it (and probably not an my slow TT).

 Hmm.. I just thought I would like to comment on the "if I would *want*
Linux" statement. I always looked at MiNT as a Linux-compatible OS that
can also run GEM applications. And I really think that the direction MiNT
currently is going, is the right one from MiNT. What direction would be
"correct" for MiNT, if not trying to get as compatible as possible with
Linux, yet stay compatible with TOS? The only other "way" I can think of
is the same as MagiC is going, and I would not like that very much. MiNT,
and its near-Linux-compatibility-but-coming-closer is almost the only
reason I have for staying with Atari-machines. But I do agree that we
should not threaten TOS compatibility too much either. The beauty of MiNT
is that I can have the best (well, almost - but keep coming closer) of two
worlds... on genuine Atari hardware, or Atari clones.

 So, I don't think "if I would *want* linux" is a relevant statement,
sorry.


 regards,

Odd Skancke - ozk@atari.org