cvs commit: src/sys/kern kern_thr.c syscalls.master src/sys/sys

[Kris Moore]

Robert Watson wrote:
> This work was done by Tijl at the request of the PC-BSD guys, who would 
> like to be able to run windows applications out of the box on PC-BSD for 
> their next release (impending).  David then reviewed and committed the 
> patch giving it his approval.  The goal here was to avoid having the 
> PC-BSD people have to run around with additional system call patches for 
> the forseeable future, and to avoid requiring PC-BSD to fork the FreeBSD 
> kernel to do that.

Robert is correct here. Tijl has done a fantastic job with getting Wine 
up to spec on FreeBSD, and it will help us greatly in trying to pursue 
our goal of getting PC-BSD / FreeBSD on as many desktops as possible. 
Easily the two most requested features we get from users who want to 
switch over to BSD is working Wine support, and Flash 9 support. This 
patch is a HUGE step in the right direction, and allows our users to 
very easily run old legacy business apps or play the latest games, like 
WoW. As such I really can't underscore the importance of this enough for 
a viable desktop product.


That being said, most of the technical details are a bit over my head, 
but I will add my $0.02 to this. Whatever the solution, there needs to 
be a working solution in the end. If there's a better, more portable way 
to do this, then by all means lets get it done. If nobody can or will 
write this solution, then lets not just drop the original patch. A fix 
is greatly needed either way, so I hope this is added in the very near 
future.

Even if you decide to only add this new functionality to FreeBSD 7.x, 
that's fine with us. Our next release of PC-BSD will be our last based 
on FreeBSD 6.x before moving to 7. We're committed to shipping with the 
patch Tijl wrote, since the improvements to Wine with it are night and 
day. Of course if you roll this into the tree, all the better since I 
won't have to spend the next 6 months to a year reminding users that 
when they update world, they have to apply the Wine patch first ;-)


-- 
Kris Moore
PC-BSD Software