Re: [MiNT] Shared libs without MMU resources

[Lonny Pursell <gfabasic@hotmail.com>]

on 3/18/04 11:28 AM, Petr Stehlik at joy@sophics.cz wrote:

> On Wed, 2004-03-17 at 16:03, Guido Flohr wrote:
>> (virtual) address of "errno" is mapped by the MMU to a real address
> 
>> Drawback: Old MiNT hardware (mc68000) does not have a MMU but it does
>> have a strong lobby here. ;-)
> 
> does the mc68000 have a lobby, really? I am wondering what the smile
> should stand for there.
> I don't believe that there are more than 5% of nonMMU users in the
> FreeMiNT camp. The ST machines are 20 years old now (the CPU is even
> older). Where are we - in museum?

I have wondered about such numbers myself.  My personal opinion for
some time is that MiNT should drop all support for CPU's below the 68030.
However, I do not know how that would effect upgraded machines.
Are there 030 upgrades and if so do they have proper MMU's on board?
I also do not know anyone who actually uses MiNT on anything less than
an 030 as it is. 

> Honestly - there is no real development, no given direction, no goals,
> no timeframe, no leaders, no discussion, nothing. Judging from this list
> the MiNT and its community is already dead. If there was a direction and
> goal, it would probably say that mc68000 is unsupported by FreeMiNT 2.0
> which is to contain the following features and is to be released at
> xx.yy.2001 (or slightly later). That would make it clear if to go for
> the shared libs and how to get there.

If that is your honest assessment then split/branch the CVS and do whatever
you wish since it's dead.  I've heard estimates there is only 3 active users
here anyway.  ;-)
 
>> Furthermore, several Atari idiosyncrasies,
>> like the variable length block of system variables, cookie jars, closed
>> source tsr programs, ill-designed ipc protocols, etc. will make the
>> whole thing very hard to implement when you still want to be able to run
>> legacy software.
> 
> There has been a strong pressure from the MiNT guys to either fix or
> abandon these ill-designed things for a couple of years already. If they
> succeeded yet or no, I don't know. We should make a poll with the
> questions:
> 
> 1) are you able to run your favourite software with MMU enabled?

Some, not all.

> 2) do you run with MMU enabled all the time?

No.

-- 
Lonny Pursell