From owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG  Thu Oct 28 18:04:48 2010
Return-Path: <owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG>
Delivered-To: arch@freebsd.org
Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34])
	by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5C23F106566B;
	Thu, 28 Oct 2010 18:04:48 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from nate@root.org)
Received: from mail.root.org (root.org [208.72.84.34])
	by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 37CF88FC08;
	Thu, 28 Oct 2010 18:04:47 +0000 (UTC)
Received: from [10.0.5.50] (ppp-71-139-7-59.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net
	[71.139.7.59]) by mail.root.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B0C276D5C;
	Thu, 28 Oct 2010 17:48:57 +0000 (UTC)
Message-ID: <4CC9B788.3080704@root.org>
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2010 10:48:56 -0700
From: Nate Lawson <nate@root.org>
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US;
	rv:1.9.2.12) Gecko/20101027 Thunderbird/3.1.6
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: John Baldwin <jhb@freebsd.org>
References: <201010281254.39862.jhb@freebsd.org>
In-Reply-To: <201010281254.39862.jhb@freebsd.org>
X-Enigmail-Version: 1.1.1
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Cc: acpi@freebsd.org, arch@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Removing acpi.ko support
X-BeenThere: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org
X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5
Precedence: list
List-Id: Discussion related to FreeBSD architecture <freebsd-arch.freebsd.org>
List-Unsubscribe: <http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-arch>,
	<mailto:freebsd-arch-request@freebsd.org?subject=unsubscribe>
List-Archive: <http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-arch>
List-Post: <mailto:freebsd-arch@freebsd.org>
List-Help: <mailto:freebsd-arch-request@freebsd.org?subject=help>
List-Subscribe: <http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-arch>,
	<mailto:freebsd-arch-request@freebsd.org?subject=subscribe>
X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2010 18:04:48 -0000

On 10/28/2010 9:54 AM, John Baldwin wrote:
> [ cc'ing acpi@ to be safe, but I think the topic warrants the wider audience 
> of arch@ ]
> 
> I think we should drop support for having acpi load as a module for i386.  It 
> adds extra complication and hacks to the i386 APIC and interrupt code that are 
> gratuitously different from amd64 as a result.  Originally it was made a 
> module so that GENERIC on i386 did not include ACPI by default but would only 
> use up memory to hold ACPI-related code if the machine supported ACPI.  Now 
> that acpi is part of GENERIC on i386 in 8.0 and later this argument is no 
> longer relevant.  I'd like to remove support for ACPI as a module to remove 
> the various hacks on i386 and reduce differences with amd64.

Fine with me. Users will still be able to disable ACPI if they want. And
systems that don't have ACPI (pre-2001) can still compile it out with
"nodevice" to save a few 100 KB of RAM. There's no reason to keep it as
a kernel module.

-- 
Nate