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Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 09:57:17 +0300
From: Nadav Eiron <nadav@barcode.co.il>
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To: Snob Art Genre <ben@narcissus.ml.org>
CC: dmaddox@scsn.net, questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: FreeBSD 2.1.7 and COMPAT_43 -Reply
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Snob Art Genre wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 13 May 1997, Donald J. Maddox wrote:
> 
> > Change what working code?  I admit ignorance of config internals,
> > but if seems to me that you would just need to change occurences of:
> >
> >   #ifdef INET
> >
> > to
> >
> >   #ifndef INETLESS
> >
> > No?
> 
> I admit ignorance of both C preprocessor workings and kernel code, but
> that *sounds* reasonable . . . :)
> 
> Why don't you work up some diffs and submit them to the appropriate
> person?
> 
> >                                             Donald J. Maddox
> >                                             (dmaddox@scsn.net)
> 
>  Ben
> 
> "You have your mind on computers, it seems."

I'm afraid there's another point overlooked here. Options like INET and
even device npx0 are part of a great(?) BSD heritage. I guess INET was
in BSD kernel configs long before FreeBSD was born.

On the other hand, it *is* confusing for a newbie to configure a FreeBSD
kernel. I think it would be better to just be able to mark to config
that some configurations are dangerous, so when config-ing a kernel
missing something important it will give a warning such as:

***WARNING***
You are missing the 'INET' option.
The configured kernel may not be bootable

Even WinNT gives this sort of warning when you disable, say, a SCSI
device driver (of fear that it is the controller for the boot disk).

I think this will leave us with the freedom to hack, the standard BSD
options in the kernel, and will scare off curious newbies from removing
important options.
Now all that's left is to hack config ;-)

Nadav