Learning to write FreeBSD Device Drivers

Peter Clutton peterclutton at gmail.com
Thu Oct 20 18:39:34 PDT 2005


Hi everyone, hope this isn't too off topic. I'm a sysadmin who taught
myself programming (and have worked as a PHP ad MYSQL developer) and
really want to develop my FreeBSD skills, and hopefully one day be
able to give something back to FreeBSD.

I want to start writing device drivers, and would love any pointers to
resources and tips from anyone. At the moment I'm reading a good C
primer, along with The Design and Implementation of The FreeBSD
Operating System ( a great book), and browsing the relevant sections
in the Handbook and the source code. I'm wondering what else i could
look at to help "join the ends" if you know what i mean.

I know there is a comprehensive book on writing device drivers for
Linux, would it help conceptually, or at all (i know the system calls
are different) to read this as a beginning? Would looking at two
drivers for the same hardware, for Linux and FreeBSD, looking at the
difference, and maybe first try porting a new one be a good idea? Are
there any other good resources anyone could point me to? I hope you
don't think I'm too focused on linux resources, if I wanted to take
the easy way, I'd be interested in it, but i much prefer FreeBSD.

Any tips or pointers to resources would be much appreciated!! Thanks in advance.


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