From owner-freebsd-hackers  Wed Oct 16 18:00:36 1996
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To: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>
cc: jehamby@lightside.com, jsigmon@www.hsc.wvu.edu,
        freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org
Subject: Re: FreeBSD 2.2.x release question 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 16 Oct 1996 16:26:57 PDT."
             <199610162326.QAA04157@phaeton.artisoft.com> 
Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 17:58:58 -0700
Message-ID: <1134.845513938@time.cdrom.com>
From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
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> I thought it was supposed to generate devices dynamically based on
> hardware presence, not persistently based on user fiat.

It's supposed to do BOTH.  As the many people who beat me up
at USENIX over it said (*me*, and I'm not even the author!):

"Fine, make it the default if you like, just make it *act* the same as
it always has then!  POLA dictates that if I decide to make a symlink
or explicitly remove a file, those changes should stay there just as
they always did.  If I don't actually have to know about it, then I
don't care whether I'm running devfs or the old /dev.  If I do, and
have to alter my administrative behavior, then I care very much."

I feel they had a perfectly valid point.

					Jordan