• Contact: tech-kern
• Mentors: Martin Husemann
• Duration estimate: 3 months

IMPORTANT: This project was completed by rtr@NetBSD.org. You may still contact the people above for details, but please do not submit an application for this project.

Several ports support a /boot.cfg file. Examples are i386, amd64 (which share a bootloader) and sparc64.

However, they do not share code, nor even the basic command parser. Obviously this is not the NetBSD way to do things and the situation needs to be improved.

The milestones of this project:

• split the machine dependent parts out
• provide generic, machine independent support for most of the /boot.cfg handling
• leave configuration (like what commands are allowed) to the architecture specific code
• provide means for overriding command handlers (i.e. implement a common command differently)

Due to the organization of the bootstrapping code this is not as easy as it sounds at first sight, but it does not require deep kernel hacking skills either. Having various hardware available for testing is a bonus, but not required.