Re: CML2 design philosophy heads-up

Keith Owens
2001-05-18T15:10:12Z

cc trimmed back to mailing lists only.

On Fri, 18 May 2001 10:53:53 -0400,
"Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com> wrote:
> (a) Back off the capability approach. That is, accept that
> people doing configuration are going to explicitly and
> exhaustively specify low-level hardware.

No, you loose one of the nicer features of CML2.

> (b) Add complexity to the ruleset. Split SCSI into SCSI_MIDLEVEL and
> SCSI_DRIVERS capabilities, make sure SCSI_DRIVERS is implied
> whenever a SCSI card is configured, etc.

As a specific case this needs doing anyway, to handle SCSI emulation
over IDE, irrespective of the board type. It needs mid layer but no
SCSI driver and can be done on a PC right now.

As a general question, I prefer selecting machine type foo to mean just
that, you get the devices supported by foo.

> (c) Decide not to support this case and document the fact in the
> rulesfile. If you're going put gunge on the VME bus that replaces
> the SBC's on-board facilities, you can hand-hack your own configs.

In general this is the best option, if you create a non-standard
configuration for machine foo then it is your problem, not everybody
else's.