From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Sep 18 21:28:06 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id VAA07984 for hackers-outgoing; Thu, 18 Sep 1997 21:28:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: from pcpsj.pfcs.com (NJaGeLX4BMK6CBWpBnCy9x8fjgLP/jkP@harlan.fred.net [205.252.219.31]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id VAA07979 for ; Thu, 18 Sep 1997 21:28:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mumps.pfcs.com (mumps.pfcs.com [192.52.69.11]) by pcpsj.pfcs.com (8.8.6/8.6.9) with SMTP id AAA08230 for ; Fri, 19 Sep 1997 00:27:49 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost by mumps.pfcs.com with SMTP id AA18989 (5.67b/IDA-1.5 for ); Fri, 19 Sep 1997 00:27:48 -0400 To: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Higher-level kernel config? Date: Fri, 19 Sep 1997 00:27:47 -0300 Message-Id: <18987.874643267@mumps.pfcs.com> From: Harlan Stenn Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk (talk is cheap) I was just noticing that I have 3 or 4 customized config files here for various FreeBSD machines, and that stuff changes in the GENERIC and LINT files *much* more often than I change hardware in my machines. One of the more boring and error-prone steps I have to go thru is to compare an "old" GENERIC or LINT file against the current ones and see what changed, and then see if I need to roll over any of these changes to my customized configs. How hard would it be (for a suitably skilled/knowledgeable person) to come up with a higher-level kernel config specification that would (hopefully) obviate the need to maintain the current config files? I'm thinking about something like: base: GENERIC storage: fd0 storage: bt0 network: ed0 irq 10 mem 0x300 which would produce a generic kernel with just the floppy and buslogic storage controllers, and just the ed0 network device (with the stated wiggly bits), and everything else provided per the GENERIC configuration. If this plan is too simplistic/controversial, how about having this config file list all of the available things without most of the "wiggly bits"? I'm suggesting this because I just edited one of my configs because btintr (or whatever) got changed to bt_isa_intr. Now I need to go back in there and see if anything else changed. H