[RFC] what do we do with picobsd ?

[Bruce R. Montague]

Hi. I have found having the source to PicoBSD available
in the kernel source tree quite useful, even if it's
not in "turn-key" working shape and can't generate
things that fit on a floppy anymore (I've used it
for Disk-On-Chip and CF based systems, starting with
around 2Mbyte devices). Most small systems <32M are
going to be customized a bit, so the fact that things
don't always completely work is tolerable... It's 
nice to start with what's conveniently there...

Since picobsd is almost all simple config scripts
and the picobsd script (well, there's tinyware too),
it doesn't take up much space.  (around 750K?)

It's helpful to know that what you are looking
at is the "intended best stuff" that works with the
particular kernel/version, even if it doesn't work
and isn't in perfect sync. If there was some other
picobsd port scheme, you would be rummaging around
worrying about whether you had the right version,
searching version compatibility lists, etc...    

So I would encourage FreeBSD to keep PicoBSD where
it is. And since Nanobsd's already there and it would
be great to have Freesbie... so maybe a single dir with
alternative build systems? 

Also, picobsd might yet again be useful for things
like Xen guest-OSes that are each a simple wrapper    
for a single guest-OS application, enabling application
migration. In this case, having a fully-functional
OS with TCP/IP in as small a guest-OS footprint as
possible might be useful. (and the Xen paravirtualization
port of FreeBSD is apparently coming along...)   


 - bruce