FreeBSD hacker 101

[william wong]

Thanks for enlightening me on different aspects. Actually I found there are
many exciting network stack projects/overhaul happening in FreeBSD 8. I just
want to gear up myself and see what I can do. I have got 6.3 installed and
tweaking some of the kernel modification and compilation process so that i
can get myself acquainted to the software development process.

It seems that Juniper favors the even number FreeBSD's. So get to know about
FB8 could be ahead of them :)

william

2008/1/24, Dag-Erling Smørgrav <des at des.no>:
>
> "william wong" <beijing.liangjie at gmail.com> writes:
> > Are there any docments or pointers to get me started hacking around my
> > 6.3 asap? Building toochains, submitting patches etc.... or i just
> > follow most of the conventions in the Linux kernel development
> > community?
>
> The toolchain is already in place, no need to build anything.
>
> You'll find our make is different from GNU make.  It may take a while to
> get used to it, but when you do, you'll find it much more powerful.
>
> The official channel for patch submissions is send-pr(1), but due to
> manpower issues, PRs often get lost in the noise.  Posting the patch to
> the appropriate mailing list may be more effective.
>
> Speaking of patches, you should seriously consider upgrading to
> RELENG_7, as 6.3 is quite possibly the very last RELENG_6 release, and
> patches against 6.3 won't raise much interest from developers.  You'll
> find information on how to upgrade in the handbook.
>
> The biggest difference you will notice from Linux is that pretty much
> everything, including major kernel subsystems, is documented in man
> pages.  If you find something (a library function or system call or
> kernel module) that doesn't have a man page, try to track down the
> author and prod them - or bitch on freebsd-doc until someone writes a
> man page - or write it yourself if you feel up to learning groff (which
> isn't for the faint of heart, but you get used to it after a while)
>
> DES
> --
> Dag-Erling Smørgrav - des at des.no
>