On Tue, 10 Sep 2002, Shawn wrote:

> Specific ports to specific processors would mean more focus on what
> makes each one tick, and how to "tweak" them into their own dynamic
> realms.  Sort of like how each variance of Unix is for the most part
> specific to their platforms:  HP-UX to PA-RISC, Solaris to Sparc, etc...
>  
> To me, that would be the biggest overall part of it.  The downside is
> that it's more work on the developers as well as the maintainers.

What you'd create is a forked mess.  Imagine is the S/390, Amiga, and
Sparc folks all forked the 2.4.19 kernel.  Amiga developers write a patch
for some Resier code that can be applied to all platforms.  Now what?  How
do you fork the code back into the tree, then redistribute it back to all
the little forks?

My suggestion would not be a code fork, but just a re-packaging with every
kernel release.  Don't just offer one large compressed tarball, build
tarballs for each platform.  You haven't forked the code, you've just made
the time it takes me to download and unpack that mess a lot shorter.

-brian