site_archiver@lists.apple.com Delivered-To: darwin-kernel@lists.apple.com :-) JP On 30 Dec 2004, at 06:09, Daryl Warkentin wrote: I can't see it taking too long for Apple to release an update as even the Apple supported firewire cameras will likely move to UDF 2.0, so I will wait. But ... what is stopping someone from porting drivers from other OSes and adding them in as "binary" drivers? Has this been tried? This method would remove much of the worry about licences and provide support for a lot of devices. On Wed, 2004-12-29 at 16:57, John Davidorff Pell wrote: JP Thanks in advance. This email sent to johnpell@mac.com _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Darwin-kernel mailing list (Darwin-kernel@lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/darwin-kernel/site_archiver%40lists.a... This email sent to site_archiver@lists.apple.com The driver architecture on almost all platforms I know of is quite different from almost all others, so porting a driver is a lot more work than porting a user-land app. That said, Apple's *nix uses a kernel architecture that is not very similar to other *nix, like linux or *BSD: it uses the mach kernel, with most of the FreeBSD kernel running on top of that. The driver support part of the FreeBSD kernel is not included in that "most". Apple's mach kernel uses a driver support framework named IOKit, which is IMHO much easier and better for developing and deploying drivers, and their kernel extension system makes everything "just work". Of course, that means that /porting/ drivers becomes nigh impossible, because it would require a near-complete rewrite. There has been talk about writing a "driver driver": an IOkit driver that is really just a wrapper around a *BSD or Linux driver, allowing for very simple porting. Nobody has gotten around to it, and I doubt they will because I think its a bit harder to do than it sounds. [soapBox] I know this is all very annoying. I think that apple should release quite a bit more of its code as open source. Using the correct licensing they shouldn't have to worry about another corporation stealing code, and it shouldn't matter that much because much of it is either strait-forward-but-time-consuming, or in ObjC. One of my own pet-peeves is the fact that the ASPL CoreFoundation is not, nor even compatible with, Apple's shipped CoreFoundation. They also don't include any build method for their Darwin source code releases. I think that Apple should move in the direction of making MacOSX a careful super-set of Darwin, and make Darwin 100% free. I've also noticed that Apple tends to ignore OpenDarwin. They've had enhancements in their patchsets for years that never make it into an official Darwin release. Now, they're behind because their work consists primarily of forward-porting patches. [/soapBox] There may be, however, some legal reason that some drivers are binary-only. If Apple did not write the code, and are licensees of it, then they simply do not have the option of releasing it. In this case, they should bite the bullet and re-code the strait-forward-but-time-consuming parts, or let the Darwin/OpenDarwin community know and hope they do it (and make it clear that a driver created in such a way *would* make it back into an official release). In order to "have at it" you would need to write entirely new drivers. The apple versions are binary-only, just like they told you on the OpenDarwin list. :-) P.S. I would bet that a future release of Mac OS X will have support for UDF 2, so your wait shouldn't be too long. On 29 Dec 2004, at 07:39, Daryl Warkentin wrote: First the quick. Will support for version 2.0 of the UDF file system be added soon? If not, can it be worked on by outsiders (i.e. me)? I understand the UDF source code has not been released. Now the long. I am trying to mount my new video camera as a USB mass storage device. The camera is detected and assigned /dev/disk1, but can not be mounted, automatically, or manually. mount_udf's man page tells me version 1.5 is supported but 2.0 is not. Linux 2.6 mounts the camera just fine, which I am assuming is due to the fact that it supports UDF 2.0. If there are no immediate plans to add support for 2.0 I would be willing to have at it. _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. 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