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Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2002 14:10:27 -0500
From: Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com>
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To: Matthew Wilcox <willy@debian.org>
CC: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
       mochel@osdl.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] eliminate pci_dev name
References: <3DD3EB3D.8050606@pobox.com> <Pine.LNX.4.44.0211141031500.3323-100000@home.transmeta.com> <20021114184431.E30392@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk>
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Matthew Wilcox wrote:

> On Thu, Nov 14, 2002 at 10:36:03AM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
> >Actually, I think we should do the reverse (for testing), and make the
> >name be something small like 8 bytes, and make sure that everybody who
> >writes the name uses strncpy()  and snprintf() instead of just blindly
> >writing whatever is in the database.
> >
> >Otherwise we'll always end up having fragile magic constants.
> >
> >Anybody willing to do that cleanup?
>
>
> Sure, I can do that.  That leads me to think that maybe we should
> delete name from struct device and just use the one in struct kobject
> (which is already a mere 16 bytes).  But if we're going to go as far
> down as the kobject... that has a dentry.  And dentrys have names.
> So how about eliminating that too and just creating a dentry with the
> almost infinitely long name?



Remember that the names we are talking about here is the English 
descriptive name of the PCI device...  there is only _one_ need for 
these names:  /proc/pci

If there is going to be this much thought put into it (what a waste of 
brain cycles <g>), then let's just remove CONFIG_PCI_NAMES and the name 
field completely.  lspci prints them out from its own database anyway, 
and the only _real_ use is to provide descriptive names for devices in 
/proc/pci.  Why bother?  For existing code, just use pdev->slot_name 
instead, which is what happens anyway for hotplugged devices that appear 
after we drop the PCI name database during the __init phase.

Comments?

	Jeff



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