why 4.X instead of 5.X

[Hiten Pandya]

On Fri, Jul 18, 2003 at 10:04:55AM -0400, Kenneth Culver wrote:
> > There is not a misread, but maybe I could have phrased it better.  The
> > question I asked was why branch off 4.x instead of 5.x, not whether spls
> > were a good thing, which we all agree must be gotten rid of.  I assumed
> > from the beginning that you would use mutexes, and having to redo all that
> > huge amount of work, when so much has been done in 5.1, well, that's my
> > question.
> >
> > It just seems to me that we could get to where you want us to go faster if
> > we jumped off 5.1 than if we jumped off 4.8.
> >
> > Is it because of the larger commit rate on 5.1 (harder to track), as has
> > been suggested?  Is it something intrinsically wrong that you don;t like
> > about the 5.1 codebase?
> >
> > A lot of your suggestions below sound a lot like 5.1's work, don't they?
> >
> Did you read his website? A lot of what he wants to do doesn't play well
> with the "heavily mutexed 5.x." He'd have to rip out the mutex stuff and
> start over anyway, so might as well do it from a more stable base right?

	It is good that Matt is starting with 5.x, since it has a sane
	performance and a stable enough compiler.  Also, I do not see a
	point of ripping out the mutex stuff and then starting over,
	because then you are back to square one, as far porting 5.x
	functionality  to dragonfly is in question.  IF  people are
	interested in porting 5.x functionality to dragonfly, they are
	gonna do it anyways... so might as well start from 4.x which is
	good as scratch.

	Cheers.
	
		-- Hiten (hmp at xxxxxxxxxxx)