8 to 9: Kernel modularization -- did it change?

[Tom Evans]

On Sat, Feb 18, 2012 at 1:14 AM, Doug Barton <dougb at freebsd.org> wrote:
> Because loading modules through loader.conf is
> veeeeeerrrrryyyyyy sssssllllloooooowwwwww I added an rc.d script called
> kld that will load the specified modules after disks are mounted. This
> is at least an order of magnitude faster.

Come off it, loading modules from loader.conf takes seconds off disk,
out of the 2+ minute total boot up. There may be benefit on slow
media, but in the general case I see no benefit (which might explain
why not many people are bothering to change their working configs to
save <2s on bootup).

wrt to sound drivers no longer being built as modules, I wonder why
this change has been made. I don't recall a mass of people complaining
that they couldn't load drivers, or adding 'sound_enable="YES"' to
loader.conf being particularly onerous.

As has been pointed out, this change makes it hard to load/unload the
snd_hda code, which is useful to wire the outputs to the appropriate
pins. I suppose if we have to "boot, test, change, reboot, test
change, reboot…" ad infinitum to do this in future, saving 2s on boot
would be *super* useful.

Whatever happened to POLA? This change surprised me, wasn't mentioned
in /usr/src/UPDATING, and I still don't understand what benefits this
change is supposed to bring.

Cheers

Tom