> Date: Wed, 17 Dec 1997 16:41:37 +1100 (EST)
> From: "Simon J. Gerraty" <sjg@notboss.cdn.telstra.com.au>
> 
> Sounds silly doesn't it.

Not to me.  See PR bin/4105

> However, for the purpose of building a diskless environment
> on a non-NetBSD server, it would be handy if:
> 
> a) there were a dev.tgz package or
Most versions of tar do not extract device nodes...

> b) dev/MAKEDEV could be run on the server.
Very easy to accomplish if the MAKDEDEV script uses
only vanilla (POSIX complient!) shell features.

> At present the use of cute features like $(($unit + 16)) etc
> rules out b.  `expr ` may be sub-optimal, but for something that gets
> run only once or twice in the lifetime of a system, optimization is
> a non-issue.

Exactly.  Actually, there are other ways to avoid some of the
arithmetic, such as putting pre-computed lists in MAKEDEV.