New loader(8) plugin

[Daniel C. Sobral]

Ruslan Ermilov wrote:
> Is there any real reason why loader.rc is not updated by
> default?  I'd be interested to know how many people out

It was my decision.

Before I wrote the stuff in *.4th that is used nowadays to read 
loader.conf, one had to write a loader.rc script to do any kind of 
special processing one wanted. Also, if anyone *does* want something 
more sophisticated, like my menu that allows me to chose different extra 
*.conf files, which in turn allows me to do stuff like selecting between 
4.x and 5.x from inside loader instead of boot0, one has to change 
loader.rc.

We standard loader.rc does provide for flexibility in the following ways:

1) User may change /boot/loader.conf and /boot/loader.conf.local, while 
"we" may change /boot/defaults/loader.conf.

2) User may change /boot/loader.rc as he deems fit, while "we" may 
change loader.4th and support.4th to add features.

Granted, the general overlay of loader.rc does restrict somewhat what 
features we can introduce.

To my mind, however, it is possible to introduce Scott's beastie menu by 
making changes to loader.4th. In particular, we could change "start" in 
loader.4th, and, if we *really* feel like it is needed, copy the old 
version to some other word (old-start, non-beastie-start, whatever :).

Also, if we do go that way, I'd like, for source style reasons, to have 
Scott's script changed not to use evaluate. :-)

> there have it tweaked.  Right now, when upgrading, this
> file is not updated with a fresh copy.
> 
> Perhaps, it would make sense to always install it as
> /boot/loader.rc.default or /boot/loader.rc.freebsd,
> at the minimum?  What do you think?

That is a very good idea though it might be misleading -- default seems 
like something we would do if nothing else takes precedence -- but we 
could change loader so. The name loader.rc.freebsd is not misleading, 
but it isn't particularly leading either :-). I'd prefer 
loader.rc.sample in this particular case.

Another idea is getting the md5 of the present version, and then having 
the installation procedure overwrite any present file if it has the same 
md5.

-- 
Daniel C. Sobral                   (8-DCS)
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