------- Start of forwarded message -------

On Mon, 12 Aug 1996 16:10:43 -0700
 Jason Thorpe <thorpej@nas.nasa.gov wrote:

 > # Machine-independent kernel options
 > option		compat_12	# binary compatibility with NetBSD 1.2
 > [ . . . ]

 > This would emit a file "option_compat_12.h" which would contain one of 
 > two things:

 > #define COMPAT_12	0
 >  - or -
 > #define COMPAT_12	1


#include <option_compat_12.h>
 > #if (COMPAT_12 > 0)
 > [ . do something . ]

This is exactly what mach did, except we used "options" as the keyword
and we did not prefix the generated file with "option_".  I suppose
this could prevent some confusion, but the kernel hacker would always
have to remember to prepend "option_" to an option name.  The question
is how likely is it that the header file namespace would conflict with
the option name namespace.