Frankly, I think that is a highly bogus way to do it.  The fact is, I
often *do* want to set up part of the softc inside the probe routine,
and storing data in a temporary structure is a poor way to do it.  It's
especially bad in the case of, e.g., low-level SCSI drivers, where I
actually want to issue some commands inside the probe.  Coding the
driver so the higher level routines don't need a softc would be a pain
and make it larger and slower, and duplicating half the driver is just
not a reasonable option.

And using my own configuration routine is possible, but why bother to
recreate this code in every place that needs it rather than in the
high-level config code itself?

As it stands, subr_autoconf.c is highly geared toward (to use your
term) `direct' configuration devices, and is a major kluge to use for
`indirect' configuration.


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