Re: Kernel compatibility between NetBSD/xen and NetBSD/i386 (or NetBSD/amd64)

[Andrew Doran <ad%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 12:43:46PM +0200, Manuel Bouyer wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 10:19:56AM +0100, Matthias Scheler wrote:
> > 
> >     Hello,
> > 
> > "uname -m" reports "i386" (respectively "amd64") under a NetBSD/xen kernel.
> > I think this is wrong because the two kernels are not ABI compatible
> > to none Xen kernels.
> > 
> > I would therefore like to suggest to NetBSD/xen report "xen-i386"
> > (respectively "xen-amd64") as the machine. After this change has
> > been made we could teach the build framework to create both
> > kind of modules.
> > 
> > Opinions?
> 
> I've been thinnking about this already; what's stopped me doing it is
> compatibility with third-party sofware. What do we break by changing
> x86's uname -m output ?

The correct way would be to resolve the kernel compatibility issues.
As I have repeatedly pointed out, this is easy enough to do because it's
just a boring mechanical job.  Like anything else it would take time and
interest.