Date: Fri, 08 Aug 2003 09:30:04 -0700 From: bmah@freebsd.org (Bruce A. Mah) To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Subject: Hardware notes Message-ID: <200308081630.h78GU4mh051520@intruder.kitchenlab.org>
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--==_Exmh_-540317100P Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Hi all-- Here's a crazy idea for the hardware notes...hopefully it won't turn into a huge bikeshed. The problem is that our hardware notes are just too darn hard to maintain. A lot of times, updating this document means trolling commit messages for updates to manpages, driver commits, and so on. Due to the way we mark up the document, additions are fairly labor-intensive. Because we currently list individual models of NICs, disk controllers, and so on, the list is extremely long, and prone to error, especially for non-i386 platforms. I propose to gut out the "supported devices" section of the hardware notes, down to the level of device drivers in most cases. So instead of trying to give an exhaustive list of devices supported, we'd list a class of device (e.g. "DEC/Intel 21143 Fast Ethernet controllers and compatibles"), a pointer to the manpage, and some remarks. Essentially the hardware notes would become an annotated list of pointers to device drivers (plus the platform-specific information, which would remain intact). It would become (remain?) incumbent on the manual pages to have lists of individual devices...most of them do this anyways. This has the advantage of not needing to track manpage updates for information which is kind of redundant anyways. The list becomes much shorter and easier to use, as well as easier to maintain. A disadvantage is that if someone has a random device (where they don't know anything about it other than its name), it's not immediately obvious what driver would support it. Perhaps more descriptive annotations would help here. Thoughts? Bruce. --==_Exmh_-540317100P Content-Type: application/pgp-signature -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.2 (FreeBSD) Comment: Exmh version 2.5+ 20020506 iD8DBQE/M9AM2MoxcVugUsMRAt08AKDV2SBGushK9d5YYK26T3mRBcPUDQCfbzMz Jin2bcesX8stQWbRxKj4fAk= =4b5M -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --==_Exmh_-540317100P--
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