Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 19:39:31 -0500 (CDT) From: "Conrad J. Sabatier" <conrads@cox.net> To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Cc: freebsd-config@freebsd.org Subject: "Next Generation" kernel configuration? Message-ID: <XFMail.20040720193931.conrads@cox.net>
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Just musing on an idea here: I've been thinking for a while now about trying to write a tool to make kernel configuration easier, sort of a "make config" (as in ports) for the kernel, similar to what's available on some of the Linux distros. Ideally, such a tool would be capable of automatically adapting itself to handle and present as choices, in an orderly and logical fashion, whatever devices, options, etc. were currently available, as defined by the files in /sys/conf et al. The major hurdle to overcome, it appears to me, is that the scheme currently employed to describe the available devices, options, etc. does not lend itself very easily at all to any kind of automatic parsing or other manipulations. Determining dependencies between components programmatically, for one thing, seems well near impossible. The NOTES files, in their current form, make even finding the comment associated with a particular option or device extremely difficult, if not impossible. Has this ever come up for discussion before? Now that we have rcNG, with its explicit declarations of dependencies, has any thought been given to doing something similar with kernel configuration files? Something still human-readable, yet more orderly and systematic, easier for a machine to interpret, present and verify? A dependable tool offering a menu-driven means of configuring the kernel, ensuring proper config file syntax, dependency handling, prevention of incompatible options, etc. -- as well as online documentation, advice, suggestions and warnings, plus perhaps a nice set of default selections -- would be a very nice addition to the system. But to bring it about, obviously a major reworking of the current system of kernel configuration files would be required. Thoughts? -- Conrad J. Sabatier <conrads@cox.net> -- "In Unix veritas"
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