Opinions thought regarding: NEWCONS, rc.conf and rc.d/syscons

[John-Mark Gurney]

Stefan Esser wrote this message on Tue, Aug 19, 2014 at 10:27 +0200:
> As you all probably know, 10.1 will ship with both SYSCONS and NEWCONS.
> 
> I'm working keymap files for NEWCONS (translated from those in SYSCONS),
> and they'll need to be named differently than before.
> 
> The SYSCONF keymap names in rc.conf will not work for NEWCONS.  They
> include an encoding scheme in their name, while NEWCONS universally
> uses Unicode.
> 
> There are a few points that still need to be considered for 10.1:
> 
> a) Is rc.d/syscons still an appropriate name when using NEWCONS?
>    (I'd leave it unchanged, but I thought I'd ask ...)

Per compatibility, leave it names syscons until the old one is
deprecated..  No point is having two copies....

> c) Do we expect to warn the user when he has a SYSCONS keymap name
>    specified in the rc.conf "keymap" variable, while using NEWCONS?
>    (This might be a good idea, at least when the default is to use
>    NEWCONS and the user might not be aware of the change.)

Yes, and then if/when syscons is removed, we remove the warning...

> d) Do we want to provide the user with an information regarding the
>    name of the SYSCONS keymap configured, to ease the transition?
>    (Could be done ...)

Yes...

> e) Do we want the rc script to translate the SYSCONS keymap name
>    to its new form? (This might be good for people using foreign
>    keyboards, if their password uses characters located at other
>    positions than on the default keymap, that will be used if no
>    valid "keymap" is specified.)

Yes, and make sure to print out a [big] warning to have them update
their config...

> f) It might be good to introduce "keymap_sc" (and/or "keymap_vt")
>    as a value used in preference to "keymap" if defined and the
>    corresponding console driver is detected. (An alternativ to
>    e) that is easier to implement and still allows to have one
>    rc.conf file that covers both SYSCONS and NEWCONS.)

I would say no, since they are similar compatible...

The biggest issue is if someone has a custom keymap...  If this
is the case, you might want to point them to a guide/your script
for converting their custom keymap... Yes, I doubt many people are
using a custom keymap, but they are probably out there...

btw, thanks for your work on bringing FreeBSD into the 21st century!

-- 
  John-Mark Gurney				Voice: +1 415 225 5579

     "All that I will do, has been done, All that I have, has not."