Hardware notes

[Eric Anderson]

Bruce A. Mah wrote:
[..snip..]
>>I actually think it works pretty well, but I'm still not really sure if
>>I think this is the way to go, since manual pages were not really made
>>for this.
> 
> 
> I'm not totally convinced either.  With my "devil's advocate" hat on:
> 
> 1.  The manpages you wrote up (dc/asr/twe) seem to be some of the
>     better-maintained manpages in the tree.  Examples of manpages that
>     aren't quite ready for this yet are an(4) and ahc(4).
> 
> 2.  If we do this, I'd definitely like the option to turn off the
>     lists of devices and just keep the descriptions.  One concern I
>     have about the hardware notes is that they're too long, and it's
>     really hard to get an overall feel for what we support.
> 
> 3.  Only half an objection, but building the hardware notes now
>     requires an up-to-date checked-out copy of the manpage sources.
> 
> That having been said, your solution definitely goes a long way
> towards grep-able hardware notes without cut-n-pasted text.
> 
> So my first inclination would be to hold off on this, at least for the
> first pass of a cleanup plan.  (Maybe we could add the device lists as
> a build-time option later?)  But we should discuss this.  Also, I'd
> like to hear what others think.

A while back, there was some talk about building a hardware database, 
that users could search through, find hardware devices, model numbers, 
etc, that worked with FreeBSD.  I offered to build it, if others offered 
to help enter data (specially those who work on the driver itself, that 
would be best for the initial start).  The db could easily be polled for 
any data needed, but I can see how this db may not always be current if 
those developers are not putting in newly supported devices - although 
that problem exists no matter what you use.

If there's still an interest in this, I can whip up some code and we can 
give it a try - but I would like to hear at least one person say "I'll 
help enter data."

Eric


-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------
Eric Anderson	   Systems Administrator      Centaur Technology
Attitudes are contagious, is yours worth catching?
------------------------------------------------------------------