The GCC3.3.1 switch on NetBSD has happened for some of the popular platforms. Matthew Green announced that he has switched the Alpha, ARM, i386, sparc and sparc64 ports to use GCC 3.3.1 as the default system compiler.
Alpha, ARM, i386, SPARC NetBSD Ports Switch to GCC 3.3.1
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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since netbsd follows a “correct by design” approach, would it be true that for someone who wanted to start off reading and learning from kernel code, the netbsd kernel would be the best one to start with? as opposed to the morass of the linux kernels? or ismy view of the linux kernels outdated
good to see netbsd progressing.
YES.
It is the best UNIXoid to learn on.
Yes, NetBSD, especially on old hardware, is a very nice place to learn how to run Unix-like systems. It’s neat, clean, and sensible.
I’m just waiting for the switchover on powerpc, as I have an old mac that runs NetBSD beautifully, while it falls down running OSX.
why is it that i can go to my local bookshop, or use online bookshops, and find several titles on the linux kernel, but not one on the BSD kernels. a while back i had to do some work with OpenBSD and could not find any tutorial information at all. sometimes, the online handbooks are not enough – there is a gap in the market, a need for a text that is not a collection of howtos and man pages.
the only text i know is the “design and implementation of 4.4bsd”… and thats a bit dated now… since then we’ve had things like kses, altq, kqueues, various threading things, pf, ipf, … and so on..
such texts would sell well.
Get Tannenbaum’s Operating Systems: Design and Implementation. Once you have read it and understand it you shouldn’t have a problem analyzing the netbsd kernel yourself, and maybe even the linux one with the aid of a lot of googling.
Hi,
i can recommend this:
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Code Reading – The Open Source Perspective
Author: Diomidis Spinellis
Publication: Addison-Wesley, 2003 (ISBN 0-201-79940-5)
In this book, the author covers one of the most important tasks faced by programmers every day: reading and understanding existing code. He thoroughly explains basic programming elements, project design as well as coding standards and conventions, concluding with a real life example of how to extend a given program by reading code from various sources and improving on it.
The vast majority of the code examples in the book are based on NetBSD source code (a snapshot of NetBSD 1.5_ALPHA is part of the software of the accompanying CD-ROM), because the NetBSD Project’s emphasis on “correct design and well-written code” makes it “a superb choice for providing example source code.”
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Also visit http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/books.html and http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/. I have on my disk a dokument called “how to write NetBSD device drivers”, but german only. I asked yesterday in #netbsd (ircnet, i’m tecneeq there) and it seems someone plans a translation.
Karsten Kruse
Karsten Kruse, thank you so much for that reply. This will help me next semester in OS Designs. I just wish I knew about BSD sooner. I would have never purchased the development tools MS offers. Although I recieved a student discount, it would have been great if my prof. mentioned invest in an BSD OS if you are currently running on a i386 platform.