cvs commit: src/sys/modules/iwi Makefile src/sys/dev/iwi if_iwi.c if_iwi

[Sergey Babkin]

>From: Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com>

>scottl> Scott Long
>scottl> I guess my vote would be to have a devd mechanism where the kernel
>scottl> can ask for a module via a particular key, devd maps the key to a file
>scottl> via its config file and loads it into kernel space as a KLD, and then
>scottl> the kernel unloads the KLD when its done with it.  For things like isp,
>scottl> nothing would change, and for iwi you'd get a reliable way of getting 
>scottl> bits into the kernel that doesn't require messing with the VFS layer
>scottl> or hard-coding knowledge of the filesystem layout into the driver.
>
>Apart from my other objections to kld, I really don't like getting
>devd involved in this.  devd is a passive listener.  It listens for
>events and then runs programs.  It is not there to interact with the
>kernel in synchronous manner.  Everything is queued and there's
>deliberately no meachanism for a reply.

A rather stupid question:
Why not just make the loader able to load an arbitrary
file? Through a separate call, obviously.
It's the same thing, only with the linking stage
skipped, and calling a pointer received as an
argument of the call instead of the module's load 
routine. Then the drivers couls just get the path from
sysconf and happily load whatever files they need.

-SB