On Tue, 27 Jul 1999 22:08:44 -0700 (PDT), Alex Zepeda <garbanzo@hooked.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Jul 1999, Ken Nakata wrote:
> 
> > > If you don't mind GPL'd code
> >
> > The thing is, we do ;-)
> 
> Sure, but as a stopgap measure..

No, I was talking about GPL'ed code within kernel which violates a
(written, I think, though I don't remember where) policy of NetBSD.

> > > All that's really needed would be a kernel with a compiled in MFS volume
> > > that has hfsutils (or the HFS mounter of your choice).  The rest could be
> > > done in straight up ANSI C.
> > 
> > That could be a solution, but it's inherently MD (i.e. mac68k specific
> > - since no other port, perhaps except macppc, needs that).  I kinda
> > hate that.
> 
> 'Course the kernel is going to be MD :^)

The kernel binary itself will be MD, of couse, but hfs layer can be
and should be MI.  Sysinst, it seems to me, should be as MI as
possible.  Creeping a mac* specific feature into sysinst doesn't sound 
right to me, but I'm no sysinst expert.

> But, as to the installer, this is not necesarily true.  Take for instance
> sysinstall (from FreeBSD).  Sure the code is rather ugly, but if done
> correctly, an installer running under NetBSD wouldn't have to know much
> about the hardware it's running. 

It just seems to me a little cleaner if sysinst can mount local HFS
partitions and read dist set files off of them (just as it would mount
an ISO9660 CD-ROM and read dist set files off of it), rather than
invoking an external program.  Well, maybe there's not much difference 
since we already do that with ftp and the likes.

Besides, with in-kernel HFS support, you may one day be able to export
your HFS partitions over the network with netatalk.  It sounds like a
win to me.

BTW, are netatalk and CAP different in treatment of the resource fork?
I vaguely remember CAP looks into .resource/file (or s/t like that)
for file's resource fork (my college uses CAP to export UNIX home
directories to Macs).  Oh, well.  I think I'm asking this question way
too early.

Ken