9fans archive / 1995 / 04 / 36 /    prev next

From: Greg Hudson ghudson@MIT.EDU
Subject: plan 9 and linux
Date: Thu, 6 Apr 1995 01:42:03 -0400


Rob Pike wrote:
> I may be wrong, but every other system I can think of is built for
> one system and then ported to another; with Plan 9, the system is
> carried along together for all architectures, compiled from one
> source tree, etc.

BSD 4.4 (and, more practically, NetBSD) has the same properties--a
single source tree which compiles for seven or so different platforms.
There are still pieces that need to be made more architecture-
independent (e.g. the console driver), butbut it's still one system that
runs on a variety of different architectures.  I'm afraid Xwindows
won't compile for BSD 4.4 in four seconds, though.

Just a note.  There may be Mach-based operating systems with this
property as well, depending on your definitions.