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Date:      Mon, 31 Oct 2005 00:11:08 +0100
From:      Maxime Henrion <mux@FreeBSD.org>
To:        Scott Long <scottl@samsco.org>
Cc:        cvs-all@FreeBSD.org, cvs-src@FreeBSD.org, src-committers@FreeBSD.org, John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org>, obrien@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: cvs commit: src/sys/i386/conf DEFAULTS GENERIC
Message-ID:  <20051030231108.GQ1327@elvis.mu.org>
In-Reply-To: <4364D017.1050605@samsco.org>
References:  <200510271734.j9RHYZAk015054@repoman.freebsd.org> <20051030062148.GA76667@dragon.NUXI.org> <4364D017.1050605@samsco.org>

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Scott Long wrote:
> David O'Brien wrote:
> >On Thu, Oct 27, 2005 at 05:34:35PM +0000, John Baldwin wrote:
> >
> >>jhb         2005-10-27 17:34:35 UTC
> >>
> >> FreeBSD src repository
> >>
> >> Modified files:
> >>   sys/i386/conf        GENERIC 
> >> Added files:
> >>   sys/i386/conf        DEFAULTS 
> >> Log:
> >> Create a default kernel config for i386 and move 'device isa' and
> >> 'device npx' (both of which aren't really optional right now) and
> >> 'device io' and 'device mem' (to preserve POLA for 4.x users upgrading
> >> to 6.0) from GENERIC into DEFAULTS.
> >
> >
> >I may be missing something.  I don't quite follow the benefit of the new
> >'DEFAULTS' file.
> 
> It's been 2+ years since the io and mem devices were made optional, and 
> the mailing lists are still filled with people who don't understand why
> X doesn't work after they remove them from their kernel config.  We 
> expect there to be a large migration of people from 4.x to 6.0 who
> never tracked the change in 5.x, or who want to bring their 4.x kernel
> config files over with as few surprises as possible, so this will make
> their lives easier.
> 
> > I'm also curious why we don't explicitly 'include'
> >DEFAULTS in GENERIC vs. the new automagic include feature.
> 
> Because if it was specifically mentioned in the GENERIC config file then
> it would be deleted by people who don't understand what it does or why
> it's important, and it would be missed by people writing config files
> from scratch or migrating from previous versions of FreeBSD.

While I'm all for making FreeBSD less prone to errors like the one
discussed here, I feel that having: a DEFAULTS file, a good comment
explaining what purpose it serves in it, an explicit include DEFAULTS in
GENERIC and a big scary comment next to it inclde explaining why one
should not remove it ought to be sufficient.  I believe this approach
would give enough seatbelts to our users while being more pleasing
technically speaking, since we wouldn't have an automagic include
feature in config(8).  (It should be noted that there were no comment
next to the mem and io devices which can probably at least partly
explain why it has been such a recurent problem).

Just my 2 cents...  Thanks to you and other re@ members for all the
great work accomplished with 6.0-RELEASE.

Cheers,
Maxime



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