Date: Sun, 30 Oct 2005 16:15:02 -0700 From: Scott Long <scottl@samsco.org> To: Maxime Henrion <mux@freebsd.org> Cc: cvs-src@freebsd.org, cvs-all@freebsd.org, src-committers@freebsd.org, John Baldwin <jhb@freebsd.org>, obrien@freebsd.org Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/sys/i386/conf DEFAULTS GENERIC Message-ID: <436553F6.20404@samsco.org> In-Reply-To: <20051030231108.GQ1327@elvis.mu.org> References: <200510271734.j9RHYZAk015054@repoman.freebsd.org> <20051030062148.GA76667@dragon.NUXI.org> <4364D017.1050605@samsco.org> <20051030231108.GQ1327@elvis.mu.org>
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Maxime Henrion wrote: > Scott Long wrote: > >>David O'Brien wrote: >> >>>On Thu, Oct 27, 2005 at 05:34:35PM +0000, John Baldwin wrote: >>> >>> >>>>jhb 2005-10-27 17:34:35 UTC >>>> >>>>FreeBSD src repository >>>> >>>>Modified files: >>>> sys/i386/conf GENERIC >>>>Added files: >>>> sys/i386/conf DEFAULTS >>>>Log: >>>>Create a default kernel config for i386 and move 'device isa' and >>>>'device npx' (both of which aren't really optional right now) and >>>>'device io' and 'device mem' (to preserve POLA for 4.x users upgrading >>>>to 6.0) from GENERIC into DEFAULTS. >>> >>> >>>I may be missing something. I don't quite follow the benefit of the new >>>'DEFAULTS' file. >> >>It's been 2+ years since the io and mem devices were made optional, and >>the mailing lists are still filled with people who don't understand why >>X doesn't work after they remove them from their kernel config. We >>expect there to be a large migration of people from 4.x to 6.0 who >>never tracked the change in 5.x, or who want to bring their 4.x kernel >>config files over with as few surprises as possible, so this will make >>their lives easier. >> >> >>>I'm also curious why we don't explicitly 'include' >>>DEFAULTS in GENERIC vs. the new automagic include feature. >> >>Because if it was specifically mentioned in the GENERIC config file then >>it would be deleted by people who don't understand what it does or why >>it's important, and it would be missed by people writing config files >>from scratch or migrating from previous versions of FreeBSD. > > > While I'm all for making FreeBSD less prone to errors like the one > discussed here, I feel that having: a DEFAULTS file, a good comment > explaining what purpose it serves in it, an explicit include DEFAULTS in > GENERIC and a big scary comment next to it inclde explaining why one > should not remove it ought to be sufficient. I believe this approach > would give enough seatbelts to our users while being more pleasing > technically speaking, since we wouldn't have an automagic include > feature in config(8). (It should be noted that there were no comment > next to the mem and io devices which can probably at least partly > explain why it has been such a recurent problem). > > Just my 2 cents... Thanks to you and other re@ members for all the > great work accomplished with 6.0-RELEASE. > > Cheers, > Maxime Big scary messages have a tendency to be ignored just as well as little scary messages or no messages at well. See also: npx. Probably the biggest omission here was a good explaination to the mailing lists and a section for the handbook and manual pages. If anyone would like to help with this, I'd gladly appreciate it. Scott
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