Extra work for those who want it
If you wanted to tackle something difficult, Simon ‘corecode’ Schubert has suggestions around multiprocessor development and also what is essentially a devfs. (Follow the threads for more information.)
Adding device, description
In a recent post to kernel about adding devices, Matthew Dillon describes how and why device adding on DragonFly deviated from FreeBSD-4, and how it could (eventually) lead to a different sort of devfs.
udev links
‘esmith’ asked about udev/hotplug in contrast to FreeBSD-5’s devfs, listing these links for more info. http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/hotplug/udev-FAQ http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/1893 http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/udev-guide.xml
Some linking
Diego Calleja brought up this paper in reference to discussion of a devfs-style /dev system. Simon ‘corecode’ Schubert linked to a patch he made to allow prebinding. (added later) Matt Dillon pointed out http://apollo.backplane.com/BSDCON2003/ now has pictures from the FreeBSD DevSummit.