> Might I recommend something like vacation?  That would perhaps cut down
> on the yammering and let people know, without taking your time to do
> it, that you're likely to get to the mail late.

strangely, i just _took_ a vacation...

> >> I added an option for modifying the NFS mount options used when
> >> mounting the root when booting diskless.
> > i didn't see this, either.  however, there's a way to do this as a
> > kernel compile option,
> 
> There is?  I couldn't see any such anywere, so I created a kernel
> config option for it.

oops; you can set the read- and write-sizes, but not options in
general.  mea culpa.  (that options is NFS_BOOT_RWSIZE, btw... I set
it up in my kernel config file so long ago, that i forgot exactly what
it did...  8-)

> > I can't see why you'd need to make this a kernel option, in any case.
> 
> _Need_ too, perhaps not.  I could do it in init, I suppose, but since
> it's a SPARC-dependent thing it seems good to me to put it in a
> conveniently SPARC-dependent place.

no, that's not what i meant.  there are a lot of other ways to do the
same thing, without an "options FOO" line.  one is a driver flag.
that might be reasonable, and is even binary-patchable.

> How can I _tell_ whether he's dropped it on the floor, as opposed to
> just being slow about it?  Bother him with yet more mail? :-)

that's the common way to do it, yes.  usually, if people do this with
me, and i know i'm not going to be able to get to it for a while, i
tell them so...

> Which brings up another point.  Someone mentioned once that PR
> submitters hear when their PRs statuses change.  I've sent in plenty of
> PRs and can't recall ever getting anything back about any of them,
> except the echo to netbsd-bugs.  Was the "someone" incorrect?  Or have
> they just sat there so far?

i forget whether the submitters get mailed directly, but the status
changes are definitely babbled about on netbsd-bugs.

> Now, since you don't have to use /kern, and I don't have to use
> sysctl(8), I can't see any reason we can't each support our own
> preferred method.

If everybody's preferred method is supported, system size is
exponential on the number of users of the system.  There have to exist
"architects" of a system, and they have to decide what makes the cut,
for the system to remain viable.

> One can hardly term it a "deal" when one party's position is brusheppd
> aside in favor of the other's.  I'm not asking you to add things to
> kernfs; I'm perfectly happy to do the work myself.

Decisions have to be made, sometimes completely arbitrarily based on
"taste and fashion."  That's the way things _have_ to be.


As for keeping your own local tree, etc. it's something that i not
only _encourage_, but i actually practice myself.  And it's _not_ very
hard at all.  (i.e. it's no more work than dragging a source tree over
the net, and importing it into CVS.)  I've been keeping my own private
copy of the tree for almost six months now, because it's been neither
feasible or appropriate for me to work in the 'mainline' NetBSD tree.


Note that this doesn't excuse what might be perceived by some as a
"bad attitude" on theo's part; i've said for a long, long time that
not only should we be going out of our way to be reasonable to keep
users and developers "happy," we should also go to what might even
seem like "unreasonable" limits to do so.  If you're not happy with
the work that somebody's doing, then you should _certainly_ tell us
about it.  But also note that by doing so, you may be asked to do part
of the work.


I've set replies to 'core@netbsd.org' because this discussion has
outlived its public usefullness.  All that can remain are individual,
specific complaints, and those _should_ be addressed to 'core'.


cgd