Change to kernel+modules build approach

[M. Warner Losh]

In message: <XFMail.20030814135816.jhb at FreeBSD.org>
            John Baldwin <jhb at freebsd.org> writes:
: 
: On 14-Aug-2003 Andrew Gallatin wrote:
: > 
: > John Baldwin writes:
: >  > 
: >  > On 14-Aug-2003 Ruslan Ermilov wrote:
: >  > > On Thu, Aug 14, 2003 at 02:10:19AM -0600, Scott Long wrote:
: >  > >> Luoqi Chen wrote:
: >  > > [...]
: >  > >> >On the other hand, all modules should create all the opt_*.h files
: >  > >> >it needs when built individually. Add opt_ddb.h to nullfs's Makefile
: >  > >> >should fix the breakage.
: >  > >> >
: >  > >> Our kernel build system isn't set up to handle passing config options
: >  > >> to modules.  Various solutions to this have been proposed, but nothing
: >  > >> has appeared yet.  In 5.x, we document that modules will not work with
: >  > >> PAE.
: >  > >> 
: >  > > How does the below look?  This is basically a more generic implementation
: >  > > of Luoqi's idea, but for -CURRENT:
: >  > 
: >  > I would prefer something far more radical that would involve moving
: >  > all the module metadata to sys/conf (i.e. removing sys/modules) and
: >  > building all the modules based on a single kernel config file.
: > 
: > Would this tie modules to that kernel config?  If so, would it mean
: > the end of the ability of 3rd party developers to ship binary drivers
: > and expect them to work with any kernel?
: 
: Well, yes, but, one could always build generic modules by using
: a kernel config containing 'options KLD_MODULE' or some such.
: This would allow one to compile optimized modules if they wanted to,
: but still provide the ability to build fully generic modules.

This sounds like an either or choice.  I don't care too much if the
third party drivers aren't hyper optimzied for my kernel.  But to
force users of them to use some generic kernel would be a big support
nightmare.

Warner