CFD: XMLification of NOTES

[Dag-ErlingSmørgrav]

Alexey Zelkin <phantom at FreeBSD.org> writes:
> This weekend I have got some spare time (due to illness) and in
> order to get some rest from current tasks decided to pass thru old
> TODO file.  Most interesting task got my attention was old item
> related to XMLification NOTES.
>
> Important advantage of this step (IMO) is to provide possibility to
> check dependency/conflicts of kernel configuration file to end users.
> [...]

NOTES is not intended as a list of supported device and options.  We
have src/sys/conf/files* and src/sys/conf/options* for that.
Dependencies between loadable drivers and subsystems are documented in
the source code (MODULE_DEPEND), though that information is not used
at compile time.  Dependencies that involve non-loadable drivers and
subsystems are not documented anywhere (except sometimes in manual
pages).  It would not be hard to modify config(8) to obtain that
information from e.g. src/sys/conf/depend*.  I might even come up with
a patch if I'm bored.

NOTES used to be called LINT until Someone[tm] misguidedly decided to
add hints to it (which made it unusable as a config file) instead of
putting them in e.g. LINT.hints (just like GENERIC.hints for GENERIC).
This was IMHO a mistake, but regardless, that file has two purposes:
primarily, to server as a kernel config that includes as much code as
possible to simplify automated build tests, and secondarily, to
document some of the more obscure options (the less obscure ones are
documented in manual pages).

DES
-- 
Dag-Erling Smørgrav - des at des.no