Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 17:39:28 -0700 (MST) From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.net> To: stable@freebsd.org Subject: Nogobble, nogobble Message-ID: <200511040039.RAA21926@lariat.net>
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The recent discussion regarding kernel configuration directives and a file containing "defaults" reminds me of a poster I saw in college long ago. The poster warned students who were headed home for the Thanksgiving holiday to lock their rooms to avoid theft, saying, "Don't be a turkey." The illustration showed the familiar circle and slash with a turkey in the middle, saying, "Nogobble, nogobble." My roommate, who was drinking a can of soda when he saw this, lost about half of the 12 ounce can through his nose. The notion of creating directives to reverse those in a file of defaults (the most amusing one being "nocpu", which sounds as if one is saying that the system has no CPU) shows how absurd this approach is. Yes, it's handy to have defaults; however, if one is building a custom kernel at all one is most likely building something vastly different from the original or it would not be worth doing at all. He or she and should expect to specify in detail what will be included in it. Copying GENERIC (or LINT, which is now absent but used to be extremely handy) and then editing it is a far better and less error-prone way of crafting a kernel than having to inspect a file and then hopping back and forth to another editor window disabling EVERYTHING in the first file you don't want (which can be quite a list if you're trimming down the statically linked portions of the kernel to the hardware that your machine actually has). My humble opinion, for what it's worth, is that the GENERIC kernel configuration should be very heavily commented and documented and that the DEFAULT file will then be completely unnecessary. Just my $0.02. --Brett Glass
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