>>        * "anyone who needs to know can look at the code to figure it
>>          out."
>
>For me, part of 'quality code' has always been sufficient commenting _and_
>documenting. But I am under the impression that it is more important that
>NetBSD sources be tabbed according to KNF than that they are documented...

Functionality seems to be the more important concern here. People are
happy enough just to get stuff working. I generally like to comment as I
go which usually results in too many comments and KNF seems to frown on
this. Other folks like the "go back and comment later" method. Unfortunately,
"later" either never occurs or they forgot exactly what the code did :)

>I am not sure that the NetBSD autoconfig scheme is something you can make a
>man page about. There has to be sort of a stairway from an abstract CS
>concept down (up?) to the source code - overviews, tech notes & other forms
>of documentation, comments, finally 'speaking' names. The more steps are
>left out, the less people will reach the other end. What is sorely missing
>here is a paper or even a book on writing NetBSD device drivers. This could
>be especially interesting because machine independence is an important
>aspect.

What kind of software engineering nonsense is this? We're making an OS here,
not an ADA program for the Department of Defense. I suppose you'd like a
Z specification as well? Go program in Prolog! ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-)

>I shall start with iwm(4) ...
>Seriously: We lack knowledge of design and overall concepts here, and of
>their relation to the implementation. I did not design all this, and I am
>only working my way through it as far as it is necessary to write this
>driver - question of economy.
>Let those tell the story who did the work...

Indeed. I'd like to document my interfaces as well as the low level code
for the intvid grf drivers. It's easy when you're adding a major hunk of
functionality to write up a document but what happens when you just
patch this and that temporarily or add a few lines of code? Most people
just don't feel the need to bother.

_______________________________________________________________________
 Michael Zucca - mrz5149@rit.cs.rit.edu - http://www.rit.edu/~mrz5149/
 "I will choose a path that's clear. I will choose Freewill. "
  --Rush, Freewill
_______________________________________________________________________