On Mon, Aug 08, 2022 at 07:18:05AM -0700, Paul Goyette wrote: > (personal note) > It really seems to me that the current module sub-systems is at > best a second-class capability. I often get the feeling that > others don't really care about modules, until it's the only way > to provide something else (dtrace). This proposal feels like > another nail in the modular coffin. Rather than disabling (part > of) the module feature, we should find ways to improve testing > the feature.
I think there's a general recognition that it's a useful feature to have, even though it has real costs (like LOCKDEBUG being so slow); but on the other hand we're still dealing with the consequences of the ... missteps ... in the initial rollout, even though it was more than a decade ago. I can't even remember at this point what half of the technical showstoppers that we were supposed to swallow were, and I know you've fixed a lot of them, but there's still at least two(*) big ones left. Meanwhile the absolute refusal of certain people to listen to concerns or consider any plans but their own creates a lingering ... lack of appetite for working on the topic, even though I think all or nearly all those people have left the project and the circumstances have changed considerably. This is certainly true for me, and I don't think I'm the only one. So, mostly, nothing happens. Note that despite all the calls to remove major pieces of functionality in the intervening years, I don't think anyone's ever proposed removing the module system. (*) I'm thinking of the build scheme and resulting configuration management problems, and lack of logging/audited of what gets loaded. [One might think the latter would be simple but it isn't.] -- David A. Holland dholl...@netbsd.org
