The loader makes use of NO_FORTH resp. BOOT_FORTH variables that are intended for building loader without Forth support. In this case you don't need several files, e.g. /boot/*.4th, device.hints and other. The patch below let the loader Makefile and kern.post.mk take BOOT_FORTH into account. Note that it affects i386 only. The changes still need to be applied to other platforms.
For bugs matching the following criteria: Status: In Progress Changed: (is less than) 2014-06-01 Reset to default assignee and clear in-progress tags. Mail being skipped
Fixed in FreeBSD 12 as side effect of loader's lua support implementation, MFC to 11 is possible.
Fixed in 11 and 12. Closing.