On Fri, 4 Feb 2000, Noriyuki Soda wrote:

> To allow completely dynamic runtime reconfiguration,
> not only unpacked locators, but also almost all information in files.*
> file are needed for kernel.
> For example, to add new device configuration entry dynamically,
> kernel have to know what is the locators where the devices hangs, and
> default values of the locators, and....
> 
	Unpacked locators is a simple first step that would allow
	reliable tweaking of what we currently have, but I agree a
	more complete solution would be desirable longterm.

> Newconfig project of japanese freebsd people tried to solve this
> problem by extending NetBSD configuration mechanism dynamically.
> (adding new drivers and new buses completely dynamically was also
>  one of their goals.)
> 
	This looks quite interesting - does their overall approach
	seem compatible with NetBSD? If so, would they be interesting
	in coordinating with pulling something like this into the
	main NetBSD tree?

> Their halfway result can be found on the following URLs,
> comparing this with our config is not difficult, since this
> was based on Dec 30, 1998 version of NetBSD's config.
> 
> www:
> 	http://www.jp.freebsd.org/newconfig/
> cvsweb:
> 	http://www.jp.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/newconfig/usr.sbin/config.new/?cvsroot=freebsd-jp
> ftp:
> 	ftp://daemon.jp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD-jp/newconfig/
> raw RCS file:
> 	ftp://ftp.sra.co.jp/pub/os/FreeBSD/FreeBSD-CVS-jp/newconfig/
> 
> 
> This config(8) does unpack locators, and also outputs files.*
> information to newioconf.c file. (though files.* information should
> be accessed dynamically, not only statically linked to kernel)


		David/absolute