device.hints question

[George Fazio]

I was installing apcupsd with an APC USB UPS, and found that I needed to 
disable the uhid driver. The instructions on the apcupsd site 
specifically say to recompile the kernel. But, I try to keep my kernel 
as generic as possible, so I tried entering the following line into the 
device.hints file.

hint.uhid.0.disabled="1"

This did not work, and I'm not sure if it's a syntax issue on my part, 
or if disabling this driver via device.hints is just not supported. I 
did a web search for information on device.hints and uhid, but did not 
find anything specific. Recompiling with a custom kernconf worked, and 
everything is up and running.. But, I'm interested in a little bit of 
background on why the device hint did not work. If anyone has a quick 
answer great. Like I said, everything is working, so it's not like I 
need an answer. But, I'm still fairly new to Unix and FreeBSD, and 
trying to learn the why behind how things work. So, any information 
would be helpful.

Thanks a bunch,

George