svn commit: r205014 - in head: . sys/amd64/amd64 sys/amd64/conf sys/amd64/include sys/amd64/linux32 sys/compat/freebsd32 sys/compat/ia32 sys/conf sys/fs/procfs sys/ia64/conf sys/ia64/ia64 sys/ia64/...

[Alexander Leidinger]

Quoting Rui Paulo <rpaulo at FreeBSD.org> (from Fri, 12 Mar 2010 22:52:27 +0900):

>
> On 12 Mar 2010, at 21:36, Carlos A. M. dos Santos wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 11:49 AM, Nathan Whitehorn
>> <nwhitehorn at freebsd.org> wrote:
>>> Author: nwhitehorn
>>> Date: Thu Mar 11 14:49:06 2010
>>> New Revision: 205014
>>> URL: http://svn.freebsd.org/changeset/base/205014
>>>
>>> Log:
>>> Provide groundwork for 32-bit binary compatibility on non-x86 platforms,
>>> for upcoming 64-bit PowerPC and MIPS support. This renames the COMPAT_IA32
>>> option to COMPAT_FREEBSD32, removes some IA32-specific code from MI parts
>>> of the kernel and enhances the freebsd32 compatibility code to support
>>> big-endian platforms.
>>
>> COMPAT_FREEBSD32 is an unfortunate choice. It can be easily
>> interpreted as "compatible with FreeBSD 3.2". Something like
>> "COMPAT_32BIT" would be more meaningful.
>
> There's a lengthy discussion about this on another mailing list.
>
> This is unlikely to be changed and emailing the committer who  
> provided valuable time on this code wastes his time and everyone  
> else's.

As someone "outside of the box" (I do not care which name is used), I  
have to say that the current influx of mails regarding this is some  
kind of indication that there are POLA implications ahead or if you  
want to have a buzzword, it looks to me like people think the  
usability of the COMPAT_FREEBSD* stuff was lowered by this,  
respectively the userfriendlyness degraded, or with again some  
different words, the COMPAT_FREEBSD* options are not intuitive to use  
anymore. When I look at our man-pages or the handbook, it looks like  
one of the goals is to make a feature easy (relative to the complexity  
of the topic) to use.

I do not care much about what you (plural) do about this, but to me it  
looks like the fastest way to not waste more time with this is to  
change the name to something less ambiguous compared to what the other  
COMPAT_FREEBSD* options do.

Bye,
Alexander.

-- 
My weight is perfect for my height -- which varies.

http://www.Leidinger.net    Alexander @ Leidinger.net: PGP ID = B0063FE7
http://www.FreeBSD.org       netchild @ FreeBSD.org  : PGP ID = 72077137