According to Perry E. Metzger:
>
>I really believe that system install should be doing much less "parse
>boot messages" and far more "use C to walk the device tree and extract 
>information".
>

A hearty hear hear to this!!! Parsing boot messages only really works
reliably just after boot which is ok for sysinst but sucks for any
longer term tool.

I have code that will walk the kernel and pull out the device info
already - I put this out quite a while ago as a thing called prtconf
just as a test.  At this point I am still resorting to parsing dmesg
output to get locator information but really want a better of doing
this as the method is fragile for a lot of reasons.  The prtconf tool
is pretty much done and I am happy to send it to people to try out if
they like.  I would like to put the thing into the core distribution
but I want to finish work on a related project which is making a
configuration file builder.  Again, people are most welcome to ask for
a snapshot of this project.  There are a couple of provisos with the
config builder:

1) the user interface is partially working only - the device tree
manipulation is done and I have started into coding the setting of the
related options based on what devices are present.  At present there
is no code for actually emitting the config file.

2) I can only test for & guarantee that the current code works for
i386 machines with pci/pcmcia/isa buses.  The config builder should be
able to handle all architectures and bus types that netbsd knows about
but I am unable to test them myself.

3) You would need to apply a fix to your libcurses to include the
extensions that Julian Coleman and myself have been working on.  The
patch was sent as a send-pr and is in the gnats database.  Either this
or you _may_ be able to use ncurses - I have not tried linking my code
against ncurses though.

Again, I am most willing to share what I have done and really do want
some feedback regarding the way I have gone about doing this.

-- 
Brett Lymn, Computer Systems Administrator, British Aerospace Australia
===============================================================================
  And the monks would cry unto them, "Keep the bloody noise down!"
  - Mort, Terry Pratchett.