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To: Philippe Regnauld <regnauld@deepo.prosa.dk>
cc: Alex <garbanzo@hooked.net>, freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: Kernel configuration script 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 04 Aug 1997 11:52:19 +0200."
             <19970804115219.19743@deepo.prosa.dk> 
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Date: Thu, 07 Aug 1997 22:47:53 -0500
From: Wm Brian McCane <root@bmccane.uit.net>
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> Alex writes:
> > Well, since I've seen nobody else make one, or publish one, etc, etc. I
> > spent a few hours, and created a trio of kludgy bash (not sh) scripts to
> > make configuring kernels a bit easier for the average newbie.  If anyone
> > would like to give them a try, I'll tar,gz em and email em out.  Otherwise
> > I'll post em in my web space when I feel they're fairly useable.
> 
> 	I'll take a look.  But let's say right away that such a tool would
> 	need three things (Terry is gonna love this :-) :
> 
> 	- UI independent code, meaning you could have this as a batch
> 	  processor, command-line or pseudo-UI interaction (i.e.: dialog).
> 
> 	- dependency check to see what's available relative to the
> 	  system we're runnning -- we don't want to have to customize
> 	  the script every time, and it should still be able to offer
> 	  SMP on 3.0, but not on 2.2.x.  Device-dependent have to be
> 	  treated as such (don't want AHC_SCB_PAGING to be selectable
> 	  when one uses ncr0, or PCI devices on ISA machine :-)
You might want to take a look at my kernel configuration program.  It is 
written in "C" and allows many forms of interaction between the various 
options.  It automatically checks for IRQ/DMA/IO conflicts.  And is fairly 
easy to configure.

> 	- some mechanism for reading and parsing pre-written configuration 
> 	  files -- accepting files like /sys/i386/conf/GENERIC is obvious,
> 	  but I'm talking at something capable of reading "skeleton"
> 	  pieces, and filling in the blanks -- for instance:
> 
> 	 include net-subsystem-defs
> 	 include disk-subsystem-defs
> 	 figure out cpu for yourself, etc...
My program can read all of the standard configuration files, and can in fact 
use /sys/i386/conf/LINT as the main configuration file for itemizing options.  
I use a modified version of LINT to do all the work.  I had considered adding 
an include option to the program, but it didn't seem "profitable" at this time.


	If you would like to see the program, it is at:

	fetch ftp://bmccane.uit.net/pub/kc/kc1.1.tgz

	brian