rc: Remove rc_fast_and_loose
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libexec/rc/rc.subr
1906–1909	Looks like this can go as well.
share/man/man8/rc.subr.8
1039–1040	Arguably, this item can be removed altogether, as it no longer describes a "check" at all.

This revision is now accepted and ready to land.Oct 23 2024, 3:22 PM

brooks accepted this revision.Oct 23 2024, 3:49 PM

brooks added a subscriber: brooks.

brooks added inline comments.

libexec/rc/rc.subr
1799–1801	We could probably drop this case as well (maybe in a seperate commit). People have had >20 years to notice the warning and update their systems.

Update docs and remove an unused boottrace function

This revision now requires review to proceed.Oct 23 2024, 4:17 PM

Harbormaster completed remote builds in B60173: Diff 145392.Oct 23 2024, 4:17 PM

0mp planned changes to this revision.Oct 23 2024, 4:18 PM

0mp marked 2 inline comments as done.

0mp added inline comments.

libexec/rc/rc.subr
1799–1801	The .sh case, correct?
share/man/man8/rc.subr.8
1039–1040	Good catch!

0mp requested review of this revision.Oct 23 2024, 4:18 PM

0mp marked an inline comment as done.

mhorne accepted this revision.Oct 23 2024, 5:02 PM

This revision is now accepted and ready to land.Oct 23 2024, 5:02 PM

brooks added inline comments.Oct 23 2024, 5:05 PM

libexec/rc/rc.subr
1799–1801	Yes

0mp added reviewers: bnovkov, christos, markj.Oct 23 2024, 7:50 PM

0mp marked 2 inline comments as done.Oct 23 2024, 7:56 PM

0mp added inline comments.

libexec/rc/rc.subr
1799–1801	Great idea! PR opened: https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=282290

0mp edited the summary of this revision. (Show Details)Oct 23 2024, 7:56 PM

Approved.

This probably deserves an entry in UPDATING as well as the relnotes tag, since it breaks backward compatibility and applies to those who track main as well as release users.

In D47264#1077729, @markj wrote:

Approved.

This probably deserves an entry in UPDATING as well as the relnotes tag, since it breaks backward compatibility and applies to those who track main as well as release users.

Thanks! I'll make sure to add an appropriate UPDATING entry.

Approved, plus a minor nit.

share/man/man8/rc.subr.8
1026–1027	No need for the newline here.

0mp added inline comments.Oct 24 2024, 8:23 AM

share/man/man8/rc.subr.8
1026–1027	Thanks for catching that. The whole sentence should read: However, it might also be ignored by .Ic run_rc_script if.

I've got some reports from the NetBSD community that setting rc_fast_and_loose on NetBSD booting on vax simh makes rc finish in 109 seconds instead of 183 seconds (https://mastodon.sdf.org/@mrgtwentythree/113364676304360235).

At the same time, brooks@ mentioned in Bugzilla (https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=282255#c4) that the benefits of rc_fast_and_loose are probably negligible.

In D47264#1078101, @0mp wrote:

I've got some reports from the NetBSD community that setting rc_fast_and_loose on NetBSD booting on vax simh makes rc finish in 109 seconds instead of 183 seconds (https://mastodon.sdf.org/@mrgtwentythree/113364676304360235).

At the same time, brooks@ mentioned in Bugzilla (https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=282255#c4) that the benefits of rc_fast_and_loose are probably negligible.

Well, Brooks' comment should probably be taken in the context of "on hardware where FreeBSD runs." With that, I suspect that that claim is still true.

Even if there is a marginal improvement (and there probably is on low-powered hardware or emulators), the option is not obviously worth the complexity, given that:

it's broken (on FreeBSD), and not well-known
fixing it would require a lot of time
it introduces extra constraints for rc scripts, which are hard enough to write correctly already

I'd still vote for removing it.

I'm sure it adds appreciable speedup in some cases, but I can't see us fixing support and keeping it working. Best to stop pretending and focus on lower hanging fruit.