Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 17:08:10 -0700 (PDT) From: Julian Elischer <julian@whistle.com> To: Noriyuki Soda <soda@sra.co.jp> Cc: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/sys/pci pcisupport.c Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.95.990512165327.22596I-100000@current1.whistle.com> In-Reply-To: <199905122328.IAA01375@srapc342.sra.co.jp>
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On Thu, 13 May 1999, Noriyuki Soda wrote: > > It is actually true that FreeBSD becomes Linux. > It is truely unfortunate that it comes to this.. however it has always been to me a source of great frustration to me that Linus was able to implement a driver framework that allows a very dynamic loading of modules and drivers. FreeBSD is designing the next logical step beyond this. Config.new is a stepping stone in an evolution. In our case we have pretty much all decided that the 'goal' for this next phase of evolution is the complete dynamic configuration of the kernel. The old "BSD way" was simply a step in the evolutionary chain. There is nothing inherrently 'right' about it. It reflects the limitations of the technology at that time. config.new did not change the level of the technology, but rather, re-arrange it a bit. The newconfig crew have made improvements to config.new to better support dynamic loading, but after a lot of discussions (face to face in many cases) the statements have been agreed by nearly all the FreeBSD people involved. 1/ a module that is pre-loaded should be treated the same as one that is 'post' loaded as much as possble. 2/ A module should not rely on any prior knowledge of it's existance to function correctly. 3/ A module should be able to supply it's own default configuration information, and also be able to access additional information that may be availabel at load time. 4/ The loadable module may implement an entirely new class of modules (e.g. a new bus type) of which there was no previous knowledge. 5/(not agreed by all) In a perfect world, /dev/ entries would reflect reality, and the sysctl name space would also do so. 6/ all the usual desirable aspects of loadable modules (e.g. unloadability) apply. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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