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On Fri, 9 Apr 2004, Aymeric Vincent wrote:

>
>Bill Squier wrote:
>
>> Knowing briefly what the sysctl knob will change right there in the
>> output of
>> sysctl -a seems like a win to me-- and a much bigger one that knowing
>> that my PIII supports the ABCDEFG-HOOKED-ON-PHONICS-WORKED-FOR-ME flag.
>
>This feature does not need to be in the kernel: it can be in sysctl(8).
>I guess the semantics for a given sysctl variable never or rarely
>changes, so that if a description exists, it will likely be correct.

This sort of misses the point -- with the new sysctl glue, we support
locally added and even third-party sysctl's.  Even better these can be
self-documenting.

sysctl.8 is never going to know about these sysctl's.  The sysctl
command is not going to know about them.  But the kernel does, and can
easily return this documentation.

So we're left with a choice -- we can have custom and third party
sysctl's undocumented, or we can have them return a kernel string.  And
once we've made this choice, are you _really_ arguing that third party
sysctl's should be documented by the kernel, but `native' ones should
not?

To save _five kilobytes_?!

- -- 
				Jim Wise
				jwise@draga.com
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