Julio,

I'm not too keen on this comment= idea, myself, but here is how I think
that you can make a patch with a similar function, without affecting as
many files and lines of code.

First, these two changes seem gratuitous and possibly misleading---get rid
of them:

    @@ -35,7 +35,16 @@
     trap : INT
     trap "echo 'Boot interrupted.'; exit 1" QUIT

    -date
    +if [ -f /etc/release ]; then
    +       version=$(head -n 1 /etc/release)
    +       echo "===> Starting ${version}..."
    +fi
    +
    +if checkyesno rc_use_comments; then
    +       echo "${rc_msg_prefix}Boot started at $(date)."
    +else
    +       date
    +fi

     files=$(rcorder -s nostart ${rc_rcorder_flags} /etc/rc.d/*)

    @@ -43,5 +52,9 @@
            run_rc_script $_rc_elem start
     done
     
    -date
    +if checkyesno rc_use_comments; then
    +       echo "${rc_msg_prefix}Boot finished at $(date)."
    +else
    +       date
    +fi
     exit 0

$rc_msg_prefix is redundant.  rc-script output is distinguished by
prefixes Started, Stopped, Reloaded, et cetera.  It is a rare daemon
uses those same message prefixes.  We can filter the exceptional daemon's
output through

    sed 's/^\(Started\|Stopped\|Reloaded\)/'${name}': \1/'

If we *must* have $rc_msg_prefix, I think you can express it more
concisely with a shell subroutine, pfx_echo.

The rc-script ${name} is the "key" for a manual page, with rare exceptions
(Luke mentions nmbd/smbd).  For a novice, terse comments such as "Internet
superserver" will scarcely illuminate the boot process at all; the manual
pages, however, are illuminating.  Moreover, they are documentation of
first-resort on the BSDs.

Instead of interspersing comment= assignments throughout the rc files, and
adding the three separate checkyesno conditionals for Start/Stop/Reload,
I suggest a different idiom.

    [ -f /etc/rc.comments ] && . /etc/rc.comments

Let rc.comments contain variables:

    dhcpd_comment="DHCP daemon (dhcpd)"
    dhclient_comment="DHCP client (dhclient)"
    inetd_comment="Internet superserver (inetd)"

A "novice"/"tutorial" installation contains /etc/rc.comments.

At the top of run_rc_command(), set ${description} this way:

    eval description=\${${name}_comment:-${name}}

Finally, print Starting/Stopping/Reloading this way:

    echo "Starting ${description}."

Dave

-- 
David Young             OJC Technologies
dyoung@ojctech.com      Urbana, IL * (217) 278-3933