From owner-cvs-all Sun Jan 10 20:52:53 1999 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id UAA02143 for cvs-all-outgoing; Sun, 10 Jan 1999 20:52:53 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-cvs-all@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from ns.mt.sri.com (sri-gw.MT.net [206.127.105.141]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id UAA02135 for ; Sun, 10 Jan 1999 20:52:51 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from nate@mt.sri.com) Received: from mt.sri.com (rocky.mt.sri.com [206.127.76.100]) by ns.mt.sri.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id VAA06928; Sun, 10 Jan 1999 21:52:12 -0700 (MST) (envelope-from nate@rocky.mt.sri.com) Received: by mt.sri.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id VAA13815; Sun, 10 Jan 1999 21:52:11 -0700 Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1999 21:52:11 -0700 Message-Id: <199901110452.VAA13815@mt.sri.com> From: Nate Williams MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: Brian Somers Cc: Mike Smith , committers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: sysctl descriptions In-Reply-To: <199901102149.VAA00631@keep.lan.Awfulhak.org> References: <199901101807.KAA07319@dingo.cdrom.com> <199901102149.VAA00631@keep.lan.Awfulhak.org> X-Mailer: VM 6.34 under 19.16 "Lille" XEmacs Lucid Sender: owner-cvs-all@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk > > > FWIW, I back Pouls opinion. What's so special about sysctls that > > > makes them even need the description field in the first place - let > > > alone actually compiling it in ? > > > > What's special about them is that they are the presentation form of > > kernel tunable values. They're fronted directly to the user. > > I don't see what the difference is between the use of sysctl and the > use of say kbdcontrol or mixer. If I want to find out how to use the > stuff that mixer changes, I ``man mixer''. Sysctl tweaks the way the > kernel behaves. If I want information, I ``man sysctl''. sysctl is too general to be documented. It would be like reading the perl manpages in hopes of tring to figure out what trim() does. Yes, you can find it, but it's not optimal for the many reasons already outlined (maintainability, ease of use, etc...) Nate To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe cvs-all" in the body of the message