Re: HEADS UP: Audit integration into CVS in progress, some tree disruption

On Wed, 1 Feb 2006, Mike Jakubik wrote:

> Kris Kennaway wrote:
>> On Wed, Feb 01, 2006 at 07:03:31PM -0500, Mike Jakubik wrote:
>> 
>>> Personally, i would like to see less "experimental" code in 6.1. Perhaps 
>>> it would be better to wait until everyone feels the code is ready?
>> 
>> Why do you care if code that is not enabled by default is present in the 
>> system? :-)
>
> Well... While you, me, and other viewers of this list may be fully aware of 
> the situation, some else who is either new to FreeBSD or missed out on this 
> info may try it and possibly be disappointed. Which would ruin their 
> experience and/or opinion of FreeBSD in general. I guess if it does make it 
> in, it would be a good idea to clearly notify the user that it is still 
> experimental, etc..

In the past, we've marked features as experimental using a man page note, 
e.g., in the mac(4) man page:

NAME
      mac -- Mandatory Access Control

SYNOPSIS
      options MAC

...

BUGS
      See mac(9) concerning appropriateness for production use.  The TrustedBSD
      MAC Framework is considered experimental in FreeBSD.

And as such in the release notes.  However, maybe we could add the following 
also:

- Dependence on defining "options EXPERIMENTAL" in the kernel configuration
   file -- if the kernel isn't compiled with the EXPERIMENTAL option, a compile
   error warning that it needs to be defined will be generated.

- When a kernel is configured with an experimental feature, config generates a
   warning, similar to the ones it currently generates about GPL'd components,
   etc.

And we should make sure there is a note in the handbook section as well.

Robert N M Watson