Kernel documentation and specification

[Jeremie Le Hen]

Hi,

> Where can i find resources about the freebsd kernel?
> I read over the developers handbook, and the architecture handbook, and 
> both provide very little information i need.

Kirk McKusick and George Neville-Neil's book << The Design and
Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System >> is indeed a great
book as it has been stated multiple times in this thread.  I won't
react about the price as I find it not so expensive, but I admit that
I'm fortunate enough to live in a country where $60 don't represent
a so much significant part of a monthly salary.

Tanenbaum has been cited, but in order to be as exhaustive as possible, 
I have to mention the << Unix Internals - The new frontiers >> from
Uresh Vahalia [1] .  This is IHMO a very interesting book in that
although it's not FreeBSD centric, it brings you a very strong kernel
culture by comparing various kernel subsystem implementations among
SVR4, 4BSD, Solaris and Mach.  Unfortunately this book is as expensive
as the first one.

> Some questions for instance are the use of sse, mmx, and fpu register and 
> commands inside the kernel. How is the development organized. Is it just a 
> jungle where people choose what they want to improve and expand in the 
> kernel and then submit their code?

If you are interested in FreeBSD developpement model, I strongly advice
you to read Niklas Saers's thesis << A project model for the FreeBSD
Project >> [2] which is the deepest analysis realized until now, at
least as far as I know.

Best regards,

[1] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0131019082/qid=1111653140/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/102-1939485-3681741?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
[2] http://niklas.saers.com/thesis/thesis.html
-- 
Jeremie Le Hen
< jeremie at le-hen dot org >< ttz at chchile dot org >