alt Hacker NewsRecompile (or at least relink) the kernel to change drivers (or even system configuration) is a bit of a blast from the past - in the 1960s thru 1980s it used to be a very common thing, it was called “system generation”. It was found in mainframe operating systems (e.g. OS/360, OS/VS1, OS/VS2, DOS/360); in CP/M; in Netware 2.x (3.x onwards dropped the need for it)
Most of these systems came with utilities to partially automate the process, some kind of config file to drive it, Netware 2.x even had TUI menuing apps (ELSGEN, NETGEN) to assist in it
Not just old stuff like that either. At least also all the SCO Xenix & Unix'es up to the technically current OSR5, OSR6 and Unixware. I don't know about other (commercial) unixes as much as SCO but given where they all come from I assume Solaris and most of the other commercial unix that still technically exist today have something at least somewhat similar.
The sys admin scripts would even relink just to merely change the ip address of the nic! (I no longer remember the details, but I think I eventually dug under the hood and figured out how you could edit a couple files and merely reboot without actually relinking a new kernel. But if you only followed the normal directions in the manual, you would use scoadmin and it would relink and reboot.) And this is not because SCO sux. Sure they did, but that was actually more or less normal and not part of why they sucked.
Change anything about which drives are connected to which scsi hosts on which scsi ids? fuggeddabouddit. Not only relink and reboot, but also pray and have a bootable floppy and a cheat sheet of boot: parameters ready.