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Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2007 18:08:29 -0400
From: "Constantine A. Murenin" <cnst@FreeBSD.org>
Organization: Google Summer of Code 2007 Student @ The FreeBSD Project
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Cc: "Constantine A. Murenin" <cnst@FreeBSD.org>
Subject: device hints for isa modules
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Dear freebsd-hackers@,

Is there a way to statically compile device hints into an isa(4) module?

 From what it looks, there is no place in the source tree to put the 
hints for isa(4) modules -- you either have to place default hints into 
GENERIC.hints, implying that the driver will be compiled into a GENERIC 
kernel, or place it into NOTES.  In the former case, having a module is 
then useless; in the latter, the module simply ain't going to work.

This is complicated further by the fact that changing isa hints after 
the boot has no effect on isa driver modules that use standard methods 
of resource acquisition. (Specifically, notice that kenv(1) won't give 
you an error message when you try to create a new hint or update an 
existing one, and the new or updated hint will in fact be visible back 
from kenv(1), but it won't have any effect on bus_alloc_resource(9) 
calls, thus modules depending on isa hints will fail to find their 
hardware.)

I'm specifically looking for a solution to a usable module for my lm(4) 
driver in soc2007/cnst-sensors perforce branch...

Cheers,
Constantine.