From owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Oct 4 15:47:49 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5EC5016A4CE for ; Mon, 4 Oct 2004 15:47:49 +0000 (GMT) Received: from harmony.village.org (rover.village.org [168.103.84.182]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EC51A43D4C for ; Mon, 4 Oct 2004 15:47:48 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from imp@bsdimp.com) Received: from localhost (harmony.village.org [10.0.0.6]) by harmony.village.org (8.13.1/8.13.1) with ESMTP id i94FkKgs091470; Mon, 4 Oct 2004 09:46:20 -0600 (MDT) (envelope-from imp@bsdimp.com) Date: Mon, 04 Oct 2004 09:47:53 -0600 (MDT) Message-Id: <20041004.094753.106215007.imp@bsdimp.com> To: martin@mullet.se From: "M. Warner Losh" In-Reply-To: <41614235.5080704@mullet.se> References: <1688.1096884897@critter.freebsd.dk> <200410041241.04608.max@love2party.net> <41614235.5080704@mullet.se> X-Mailer: Mew version 3.3 on Emacs 21.3 / Mule 5.0 (SAKAKI) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit cc: max@love2party.net cc: phk@phk.freebsd.dk cc: freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: /sys/conf is getting unwieldy to handle... X-BeenThere: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussion related to FreeBSD architecture List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 04 Oct 2004 15:47:49 -0000 In message: <41614235.5080704@mullet.se> Martin Nilsson writes: : Max Laier wrote: : > Yet, there is a bit more to it. It would (imo) also involve some thinking : > about the way we build modules (there is a TODO item "revised kld build : > infrastructure" that seems to cover that part) : : Are there any really good reasons why we build lots of modules and most : users uses kernels with nearly everything compiled in. Isn't it time to : make GENERIC really small, just include what can't be loaded as modules : and make loader.conf and the rc scripts load the rest? Of course this : requres a stable module ABI and no use of options that break this. I've been running this way for about 18-20 months. Except for sometimes forgetting to include acpi in the module list, it works great. Well, as long as I don't take short-cuts like 'NO_MODULES' when I'm developing a new kernel. However, I'm not building third-party binary packages at the same time, which is the real kicker. I believe that we already have an 'include' statement, so someone could easily try the include stuff on a prototype basis w/o any real hassle. That would let us get experience with how good or bad phk's ideas are. I suspect they are overly simplistic because they are too lumpy: they include too many drivers that a typical custom kernel would want to get rid of. They just make GENERIC look nicer, but I'm not sure how well it will help things. Warner