Greg Lehey <grog(a)lemis.com> wrote:
I've just been asked a rather unusual question:
when you build a BSD
kernel, the name of the configuration file is traditionally upper
case. Does anybody have insight as to why this should be?
Because that's how the founding fathers at Berkeley had it!
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From "Joerg B. Micheel"
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Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 12:00:00 +1300
From: "Joerg B. Micheel" <joerg(a)begemot.org>
To: Greg Lehey <grog(a)lemis.com>
Cc: UNIX Heritage Society <pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au>,
FreeBSD Chat <chat(a)FreeBSD.ORG>, joerg(a)begemot.org
Subject: Re: Why upper case configuration file names in BSD?
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On Fri, Feb 04, 2000 at 08:49:28AM +1030, Greg Lehey wrote:
I've just been asked a rather unusual question:
when you build a BSD
kernel, the name of the configuration file is traditionally upper
case. Does anybody have insight as to why this should be?
I have no knowlegde, but a guess. Berkeley must have had different
machines with different hardware configurations. Conditional
compilation is done with a dependency flag. GENERIC defines -DGENERIC.
A MICROVAX file would imply -DMICROVAX. It may be for this reason
only, conventions.
Joerg
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From Jamie Bowden <ragnar(a)sysabend.org> Fri Feb
4 23:21:11 2000
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From: Jamie Bowden <ragnar(a)sysabend.org>
To: Greg Lehey <grog(a)lemis.com>
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Subject: Re: Why upper case configuration file names in BSD?
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On Fri, 4 Feb 2000, Greg Lehey wrote:
:I've just been asked a rather unusual question: when you build a BSD
:kernel, the name of the configuration file is traditionally upper
:case. Does anybody have insight as to why this should be?
I've always done mine lowercase. I wasn't aware I was violating any sort
of tradition.
Jamie Bowden
--
"Of course, that's sort of like asking how other than Marketing,
Microsoft is different from any other software company..."
Kenneth G. Cavness