GENERIC and DEFAULTS

[Matt Emmerton]

> On Thursday 15 December 2005 03:49 pm, Matt Emmerton wrote:
> > I know this has been discussed ad nauseum, but here's my $0.02:
> >
> > Why not mark these entries as 'mandatory' in /usr/src/sys/conf/files*
> > instead?
> > This will cause config to error out if they are not specified in the
> > config, and handles the common case (normal users).
> > .
> > For those power users who really want to disable the devices, we should
> > smarten up the nodevice handling in config(8) to that (nodevice &&
> > mandatory) is not an error.
>
> What happens when you mark some of the files for a device mandatory but
not
> others?  How do you make an option that isn't listed in sys/conf/files
> mandatory?  After considering these questions and several others, the
> conclusion was reached that it was a lot simpler and less error prone to
use
> the same format for defaulting options on or devices on that we use to
turn
> them on in the first place: i.e. a config file.  If it really gets peoples
> panties all up in wads we can move the defaults files to /sys/conf (e.g.
> sys/conf/DEFAULTS.i386 or even sys/conf/defaults.i386).

Points taken; moving to private e-mail and/or -current for more in-depth
discussion.

--
Matt Emmerton