NTFS in GENERIC: opt-in or opt-out?

[Scot Hetzel]

On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 2:35 AM, Maxim Sobolev <sobomax at freebsd.org> wrote:
> Erich Dollansky wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> On Sun, 2009-01-18 at 23:25 -0800, Maxim Sobolev wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I am reviewing differences between amd64 and i386 GENERIC kernels and
>>> noticed that for some unclear reason we ship amd64 GENERIC with NTFS module
>>> compiled in, while i386 without it. IMHO both should match. The question is
>>> whether NTFS should be i386 way (opt in) or amd64 way (opt
>>
>> the Windows file system?
>>
>> I would use opt-in as most people will not need it.
>
> Any particular reason why not? Memory is cheap, 100-200KB of extra kernel
> code doesn't really matter today, while NTFS is probably the most widespread
> filesystem after MSDOS. Therefore supporting it in the GENERIC out of the
> box even in the read-only mode (our NTFS driver is read-only AFAIK) could
> benefit many users.
>
I have been using FreeBSD/amd64, and my kernel doesn't include the
NTFS filesystem complied in.  Instead, I let the mount command load
the ntfs.ko kernel module when I need read access to my NTFS
filesystems.

Since a buildkernel will install the ntfs.ko kernel module by default,
their is no need to have the NTFS filesystem complied into GENERIC.

Scot