Re: platform/pc64 will be dropped

["Simon 'corecode' Schubert" <corecode@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Matthew Dillon wrote:
>     Similarly, some bits of pc32 can be moved to the cpu hierarchy... but
>     ONLY those bits that are also needed by the virtual kernel (otherwise
>     they ARE platform and not cpu specific bits and have to stay in pc32).

I think we need to have something in between:  a CPU specific section of the platform code.

So:  ACPI, APIC, 90% of all headers in platform/pc32/include, stuff like that, all of this is the same between pc32/i386 and pc64/amd64.

Now.  Different are bits like exception handling, etc.  Basically everything in a .s file or containing inline assembler.

So where does us leave this?  We need an intermediate section, which should be "cpu specific platform code".  I think this does make sense.  If somebody has a better idea on how to structure it while avoiding duplication, I'm all ears.  For example, I think having platform specific cpu code seems kind of wrong.

>     There will be some near duplication of code but the purpose of having
>     pc64 is to provide a place where work can progress without causing the
>     pc32 builds to start failing and crashing.

Nobody intends to break or crash the pc32/i386 code base :)  But still I am sure that we need to restructure to split the pc32 code to make it really represent the ibm pc architecture.  And I think this is very much possible and clean to do.

cheers
 simon