Greg KH wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 20, 2002 at 07:55:22PM -0700, David Brownell wrote:
>
>>How about a facility to create the character (or block?) special file
>>node right there in the driverfs directory? Optional of course.
>
>
> No, Linus has stated that this is not ok to do. See the lkml archives
> for the whole discussion about this.
I suspected that'd be the case. Some pointer into the archives
would be good, though I'd suspect the basic summary is that it'd
be too much like devfs that way. Did the same statement apply to
adding some file that wasn't a device special file? That kind
of solution moves in the "no majors/minors" direction, which I
thought was the general goal. Leaves a naming policy debate,
but one that ought to be more managable (say, with devlabel).
Though I guess my original reaction still stands then: I don't
much want to care about major/minor numbers, so why not just leave
them out in favor of whatever better solution is the goal? Save
everyone the intermediate steps!
- Dave
On Fri, Sep 20, 2002 at 08:58:09PM -0700, David Brownell wrote:
> Greg KH wrote:
> >On Fri, Sep 20, 2002 at 07:55:22PM -0700, David Brownell wrote:
> >
> >>How about a facility to create the character (or block?) special file
> >>node right there in the driverfs directory? Optional of course.
> >
> >
> >No, Linus has stated that this is not ok to do. See the lkml archives
> >for the whole discussion about this.
>
> I suspected that'd be the case. Some pointer into the archives
> would be good, though I'd suspect the basic summary is that it'd
> be too much like devfs that way. Did the same statement apply to
> adding some file that wasn't a device special file? That kind
> of solution moves in the "no majors/minors" direction, which I
> thought was the general goal. Leaves a naming policy debate,
> but one that ought to be more managable (say, with devlabel).
All naming policies are moving to userspace. It will not be a kernel
issue.
> Though I guess my original reaction still stands then: I don't
> much want to care about major/minor numbers, so why not just leave
> them out in favor of whatever better solution is the goal? Save
> everyone the intermediate steps!
No, we need the major/minor number to be in driverfs. That way the
userspace program (that's running the naming policy) can look at
driverfs to see what devices are present, what the major/minor number of
the device is, what type of device it is, and then create the /dev node
for the device, based on that information.
We are slowly getting there, and I don't see any intermediate steps
along the way (meaning ones that get ripped out later.)
thanks,
greg k-h