Porting NetBSD/evbarm to the Arcom Viper

Antti Kantee

NetBSD is known for extreme portability, and it is easy to port the system onto new hardware. Porting is especially easy in case the target system CPU architecture is already supported.

In this talk the process of porting NetBSD is examined when the CPU infrastructure already exists. In the case of NetBSD/evbarm, the porting work consists of writing the necessary configuration files, creating low-level assembly initialization code matching the memory layout of the board, creating the C language high-level initialization routines and adding support for the necessary devices in the form of device drivers.

In addition to describing the steps involved, some useful tools and debugging techniques for the porting work are presented.

About the Author

Antti Kantee likes to cook and eat. Unfortunately, his stomach has finite capacity, so he tries to fill the void by hacking on NetBSD (actually, he hopes for the non-void to become empty again to facilitate more eating).

In a more professional capacity, when not contemplating the secrets of a perfect sauce demi-glace, he works as a researcher at the Helsinki University of Technology. Every now and then he manages to dedicate a few time slices to his dissertation, which he hopes will be finished after a finite period in time.

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