making SW_WATCHDOG dynamic

[Willem Jan Withagen]

On 28/12/2017 03:23, Mark Linimon wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 27, 2017 at 10:11:52AM -0800, Rodney W. Grimes wrote:
>> I think we have lost some light as to what the GENERIC kernel
>> is really for, to get you up and running good enough that you
>> can infact build a custom kernel.  I do not think it was ever
>> intended that people run this long term, though over the years
>> that has become the defacto standard.  IMHO, a bad one at that.
> 
> By including more things in GENERIC, we expanded our audience past
> "kernel developers + system administrators".
> 
> In particular, including "people using desktops and laptops who just
> want to get work done".
> 
> Expecting everyone to recompile their kernels would be a shocking
> step backwards for the project IMVHO.

I've been building custom kernels for as long as I can remember. And it 
used to be like you describe, get the box running and give it its own 
build-config.
But as the number of systems under my fingers grew, maintenance became 
more and more a pain/time-consuming. And since about a year I've started 
using freebsd-update on those systems that need proper maintenance.

And I cannot avoid the feeling that this is sort of perpendicular to 
your suggestion of building custom kernels, since freebsd-update frowns 
on that... And I've got the feeling that's the tool quite a lot of 
people use to deal with basic Freebsd maintenance stuff.

--WjW