Unfortunately, this level doesn't really provide enough granularity. We
probably need several MI NOTES type files for things that are shared by
several architectures but not by all. For example, the PCI options could
live in a NOTES.pci.
This also updates the Makefile for i386 to generate LINT. The only changes
in the generated LINT are the order of various options.
Suggestions for improvement welcome.
Use Warner Losh's "hint" driver to decode ascii strings to fill the
resource table at boot time.
config(8) no longer generates an ioconf.c table - ie: the configuration
no longer has to be compiled into the kernel. You can reconfigure your
isa devices with the likes of this at loader(8) time:
set hint.ed.0.port=0x320
userconfig will be rewritten to use this style interface one day and will
move to /boot/userconfig.4th or something like that.
It is still possible to statically compile in a set of hints into a kernel
if you do not wish to use loader(8). See the "hints" directive in GENERIC
as an example.
All device wiring has been moved out of config(8). There is a set of
helper scripts (see i386/conf/gethints.pl, and the same for alpha and pc98)
that extract the 'at isa? port foo irq bar' from the old files and produces
a hints file. If you install this file as /boot/device.hints (and update
/boot/defaults/loader.conf - You can do a build/install in sys/boot) then
loader will load it automatically for you. You can also compile in the
hints directly with: hints "device.hints" as well.
There are a few things that I'm not too happy with yet. Under this scheme,
things like LINT would no longer be useful as "documentation" of settings.
I have renamed this file to 'NOTES' and stored the example hints strings
in it. However... this is not something that config(8) understands, so
there is a script that extracts the build-specific data from the
documentation file (NOTES) to produce a LINT that can be config'ed and
built. A stack of man4 pages will need updating. :-/
Also, since there is no longer a difference between 'device' and
'pseudo-device' I collapsed the two together, and the resulting 'device'
takes a 'number of units' for devices that still have it statically
allocated. eg: 'device fe 4' will compile the fe driver with NFE set
to 4. You can then set hints for 4 units (0 - 3). Also note that
'device fe0' will be interpreted as "zero units of 'fe'" which would be
bad, so there is a config warning for this. This is only needed for
old drivers that still have static limits on numbers of units.
All the statically limited drivers that I could find were marked.
Please exercise EXTREME CAUTION when transitioning!
Moral support by: phk, msmith, dfr, asmodai, imp, and others
