From owner-cvs-all Wed May 30 22:11:45 2001 Delivered-To: cvs-all@freebsd.org Received: from netau1.alcanet.com.au (ntp.alcanet.com.au [203.62.196.27]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0B28F37B423; Wed, 30 May 2001 22:11:26 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jeremyp@gsmx07.alcatel.com.au) Received: from mfg1.cim.alcatel.com.au (mfg1.cim.alcatel.com.au [139.188.23.1]) by netau1.alcanet.com.au (8.9.3 (PHNE_22672)/8.9.3) with ESMTP id PAA29640; Thu, 31 May 2001 15:11:17 +1000 (EST) Received: from gsmx07.alcatel.com.au by cim.alcatel.com.au (PMDF V5.2-32 #37645) with ESMTP id <01K47V2ZZN2OS4Q1F0@cim.alcatel.com.au>; Thu, 31 May 2001 15:11:13 +1000 Received: (from jeremyp@localhost) by gsmx07.alcatel.com.au (8.11.1/8.11.1) id f4V5BDs27026; Thu, 31 May 2001 15:11:13 +1000 (EST envelope-from jeremyp) Content-return: prohibited Date: Thu, 31 May 2001 15:11:12 +1000 From: Peter Jeremy Subject: Re: Documenting sysctls (was: cvs commit: src/sbin/sysctl sysctl.8) In-reply-to: <25323.991263026@axl.fw.uunet.co.za>; from sheldonh@starjuice.net on Thu, May 31, 2001 at 12:50:26AM +0200 To: Sheldon Hearn Cc: Jesper Skriver , Greg Lehey , Dima Dorfman , cvs-committers@FreeBSD.ORG, cvs-all@FreeBSD.ORG Mail-Followup-To: Sheldon Hearn , Jesper Skriver , Greg Lehey , Dima Dorfman , cvs-committers@FreeBSD.ORG, cvs-all@FreeBSD.ORG Message-id: <20010531151112.A26747@gsmx07.alcatel.com.au> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i References: <20010531003943.E78414@skriver.dk> <25323.991263026@axl.fw.uunet.co.za> Sender: owner-cvs-all@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On 2001-May-31 00:50:26 +0200, Sheldon Hearn wrote: >On Thu, 31 May 2001 00:39:43 +0200, Jesper Skriver wrote: >> If we can agree it's in sysctl(8) it should be, I'll start with >> the net.inet ones, apart from the net.inet.tcp ones which are in tcp(4) > >Last time this came up, there were two schools of thought: Note that there is also provision for a description in the sysctl definitions in the source code. This probably isn't the best place for a detailed description, but would be good for a 1-line summary. The descriptions can be extracted either by a tool that greps them out of the source code, or by compiling them into an ELF segment that isn't loaded. (I've had a go at the latter, but couldn't get the linker description correct). It would be nice if the sysctl descriptions in the man pages could be automatically built from the sysctl descriptions in the source, but I suspect this would be non-trivial to implement. >I think a balance can be struck, where sysctls that belong to a device >are documented in the documentation for that device, while sysctls that >don't can be documented in sysctl(8) (or some other common place). I agree with Brooks Davis that it would be nice if sysctl(8) [or whatever] at least had pointers to where other hierarchies were described. Peter To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe cvs-all" in the body of the message