GSoC: registration of optional kernel features via sysctl: a question to the community

[Alexander Leidinger]

Quoting Kostik Belousov <kostikbel at gmail.com> (from Wed, 9 Jun 2010  
16:25:43 +0300):

>> I can not think of any viable reason why one would want to "spoof" this
>> when it is not available.
> Many ports are doing wrong thing there, checking for run-time features at
> the build-time, turning on/off some functionality depending on its
> presence on the build host.

We heard that "there are some ports", but we do not know a concrete  
example. Anyone here with a concrete example of such a port (maybe  
more than one)?

The big question here is: what is going on at build time regarding  
those features?

As you describe the problem, we have to make a change to the port  
anyway. And IMO it does not matter much if we change it to detect it  
at run-time (then we do not need the spoofing feature), or if we  
change it to look for the sysctl at build time. And the preferred way  
would be to detect at run-time then.

What we search for is a good real-life example where spoofing a  
non-existing feature would be helpful. So far we where able to come up  
with cases where this would hurt, but not help.

Bye,
Alexander.

-- 
If the master dies and the disciple grieves,
the lives of both have been wasted.

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