Re: Aunt Tillie builds a kernel (was Re: ISA hardware discovery --

[Alex Bligh - linux-kernel]

>> From the other side, how does having the ability to probe local hardware
>> hurt?  It should be cleanly seperable from the classical build process
>> for the purists, and helpful to some (I think) significant portion of
>> the userbase, particularly those folks who like to test bleeding edge
>> stuff on a variety of hardware.  I don't really understand the
>> resistance to the idea of someone going out and implementing this.
>
> Right, and this is 95% possible even.  Doing PCI stuff is rather easy
> (since we've got it all mapped out even).  The problem is the 100%
> point-click-run goal that Eric has.
>
> The original sticking point was doing ISA (and other buses that are
> _not_ autodetect friendly in a safe way).

& this has a seemingly obvious solution, which is, if the autoprobe
stuff is selected, and, after presentation of the initial list
of drivers, plus comments like 'Network card: none', 'Sound card: none',
say 'We may have missed some stuff if you have an old computer, press
Y if what we've detected doesn't find all your hardware', and if
they press Y (only), select as modules every ISA driver except
those, which when loaded on a system not containing the relevant
card, can cause a hangup; thus deferring the autoprobing until
boot time.

--
Alex Bligh