New loader(8) plugin

[Ruslan Ermilov]

On Thu, Jun 05, 2003 at 10:58:08AM -0300, Daniel C. Sobral wrote:
> 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.
> 
We could avoid this problem by having the standard loader.rc installed
to /boot/defaults/loader.rc, and modifying loader(8) to parse
/boot/loader.rc if it exists, and /boot/defaults/loader.rc otherwise.

> 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. :-)
> 
I can't comment here, Forth is double Dutch for me.  ;)

-- 
Ruslan Ermilov		Sysadmin and DBA,
ru at sunbay.com		Sunbay Software Ltd,
ru at FreeBSD.org		FreeBSD committer
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