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Date:      Thu, 29 Jun 2000 14:42:57 +0100
From:      Nik Clayton <nik@freebsd.org>
To:        Warner Losh <imp@village.org>
Cc:        Nik Clayton <nik@FreeBSD.ORG>, "Thomas M. Sommers" <tms2@mail.ptd.net>, doc@FreeBSD.ORG, current@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: XML driver config file to replace LINT
Message-ID:  <20000629144257.A23415@catkin.nothing-going-on.org>
In-Reply-To: <200006290024.SAA59981@harmony.village.org>; from imp@village.org on Wed, Jun 28, 2000 at 06:24:01PM -0600
References:  <20000628173457.C51610@catkin.nothing-going-on.org> <200006271619.BAA25205@mail.geocities.co.jp> <20000625195803.G470@kilt.nothing-going-on.org> <20000626115008.B462@catkin.nothing-going-on.org> <200006280714.BAA03596@harmony.village.org> <395A1950.50ECD8D5@mail.ptd.net> <20000628173457.C51610@catkin.nothing-going-on.org> <200006290024.SAA59981@harmony.village.org>

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On Wed, Jun 28, 2000 at 06:24:01PM -0600, Warner Losh wrote:
> In message <20000628173457.C51610@catkin.nothing-going-on.org> Nik Clayton writes:
> : On Wed, Jun 28, 2000 at 11:27:12AM -0400, Thomas M. Sommers wrote:
> : > Warner Losh wrote:
> : > > 
> : > > Any reason that the .c/.h files of the drivers couldn't be used to
> : > > generate this information?  
> : > 
> : > Or perhaps the other way around.
> : 
> : That's what I'd prefer.  Any solution that relys on trying to parse
> : "structured comments" like that is a kludge at best.  I'd rather get 
> : all this information in to a usefully structured form now, and then
> : process it to produce the various output formats we need.
> 
> I think that this will doom the information to always being obsolete.
> If the information is in the .h or .c files, then it will be looked at
> (and corrected) all the time by the programmers.  If not, then it will
> rot as badly as LINT has been rotting.  It has taken much effort to
> keep LINT as non-rotten as it has been kept.

The .h file(s) should be generated from this XML config file, or some other
mechanism needs to be put in place to prevent a (hardware) module from 
working if there isn't a functional entry for it in this XML config file.

We've successfully demonstrated that hardware authors don't keep things
like LINT up to date.  We've also successfully demonstrated that getting
volunteers to scan the mailing lists and keep HARDWARE.TXT and similar
up to date is equally futile.

It's time to turn the tables.

I don't know enough about the -current build environment to say precisely
how this could be done (yet).  But God help you all if I scrape together
sufficient resources to put together a box for -current.

In the meantime, I'd appreciate suggestions as to how you (or anyone else)
would go about abstracting some of the core information that a driver needs
out of a source file.

N
-- 
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