Continued use of "HAL" in FreeBSD

[Ivan Voras]

On 03/11/10 12:36, Gerard wrote:
> I have read that 'HAL' is now considered depreciated and that it is no
> longer being actively maintained. I have read many articles describing
> its short comings, etc. I even came across this URL:
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Halsectomy, while not directly connected to
> FreeBSD, it is interesting.
>
> I was just wondering what the FreeBSD community is doing in regards to
> "HAL"? Is there any work being done to replace it?

As described in the Ubuntu page, FreeBSD has for a long time had 
mechanisms that do what HAL does, in a different way (see e.g. 
/etc/devd.conf). Unfortunately, it is not popular enough for the various 
application developers (from X.Org, Gnome, KDE) to build specific 
support for these. The one quality HAL has is that, while ugly, it was 
available on many platforms.