On 2007-03-21 at 18:11:55 [+0100], Simon Taylor <simontaylor1@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > From: Ingo Weinhold <bonefish@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > > On 2007-03-21 at 15:17:26 [+0100], Jonas Sundström <jonas@xxxxxxxxxxx> > > wrote > > > > I don't want to be the party-pooper, but I think, this porting discussion > > is moot. A port to a platform, PPC, MIPS, SPARC, whatever, will happen, if > > and only if a developer feels like doing it and does it. And if such a > > port > > is done in a reasonable way, we will, of course, add it to the official > > Haiku sources, whatever the platform. > > Of course everyone is free to work on whatever they want - and that will > determine what actually happens. I'd still argue about the wisdom of "of > course we will add it, whatever the platform". > > Say the kernel is ported to something like an iPod or a smartphone. OK, the > kernel may run on the device, but will it still have StyledEdit? ShowImage? > All the irrelevant preference apps? I'd guess not - so then will the > HaikuSmartPhoneImageBrowser written for that particular platform also be > included in the Haiku tree even though it is useless on x86? Do we still > want to call the system Haiku? You're talking about applications. My understanding of "port" is absolutely technical: Take what is there and make it run on the new platform, i.e. add/complete the platform/architecture specific parts of build tool chain, boot loader, kernel, drivers, runtime loader, libroot, etc. If that's done properly, virtually all applications (with a few exceptions, like gdb) will run on the new platform without any changes. What new applications to include in the Haiku source tree is a differ matter. In the past this has been decided on a case-by-case basis and we'll likely continue to do so. > This is the kind of case where I would strongly argue a separate project is > better. It can be linked with Haiku, but it really should live in its own > independent tree IMHO. If someone is not happy with our choices for our distro (or we don't even do a distro for a certain platform), he's absolutely free to do his own distro. And IMHO adding and maintaining support for a new platform (that we might not do a distro for) in our source tree is a way better option than a complete fork. CU, Ingo