GENERIC and DEFAULTS

[Kris Kennaway]

On Mon, Oct 31, 2005 at 03:46:56PM -0800, Pete Slagle wrote:
> >>i agree 100%, i hate wizardy/black-magic, and this 'fix' falls in that
> >>class. Why was a 5ton hammer used to fix non existing problem?
> >>a small comment like 'you better keep these lines to make X happy'
> >>would have sufficed.
> >
> >
> >You've clearly never spent much time on the FreeBSD support forums,
> >where every few days someone posts for help
> >
> >1) with an error caused by removing one of those "Do not remove this!"
> >lines, and
> >
> >2) for help on getting X working when they forgot to add /dev/io and
> >/dev/mem to their kernel.
> >
> >Those of us who spend a lot of time answering such questions will
> >surely welcome the change, since it will hopefully reduce our
> >workload.
> 
> Abundant thanks and sympathy are due to the generous souls that staff 
> the support forums. That said, it is far from clear that ease-of-use 
> considerations are the most important factor.
> 
> Freedom to not have the O/S second guess one's choices, or worse, 
> silently override them, is one of the main differentiators between 
> FreeBSD and other available operating systems. Many (most?) of us are 
> here because we do not want excessive complexity and hand holding. Let's 
> not give away the fundamental character of FreeBSD in an (undoubtedly 
> futile) attempt to make it idiot-proof.
> 
> This is a small case in itself, but it represents a much larger issue 
> concerning future direction.

It doesn't silently override them, you can remove the defaults with
appropriate nodevice settings.  However, I bet you don't even want to
build a kernel without npx, mem or io support, so you're just arguing
for the sake of it.

kris
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