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Date: Fri, 06 Dec 2002 17:17:01 -0500
From: Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com>
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To: Patrick Mochel <mochel@osdl.org>
CC: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com>
Subject: Re: /proc/pci deprecation?
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Patrick Mochel wrote:
> ISTR /proc/pci being deprecated at one point in the past. It may have only
> been discussed, though. In which case, is it possible to deprecate it?
> lscpi(8) is considered a superior means to derive the same information.
> 
> Elimination of it would eliminate a chunk of code in drivers/pci/proc.c, 
> and obviate the use of struct device::name by the PCI layer. This change 
> would probably allow us to remove the name field altogether, since PCI is 
> the only code that really relies on it (and only for /proc/pci AFAICT).


Historically, this was a Linus call :)

IIRC it was one of (a) deprecated, (b) removed, or (c) almost removed in 
the past, and Linus un-deprecated it.  The logic back then was that it 
provides a quick summary of a lot of useful info, a la /proc/cpuinfo and 
/proc/meminfo.  i.e. you don't need lspci installed, just been /bin/cat.

Personally, I think it would be nice to eliminate /proc/pci -- in favor 
of something that provides similar functionality from sysfs:  "cat 
/sys/all-busses" or somesuch.  I dunno how feasible that is.  The main 
idea is to list as many attached devices as possible in one go, without 
having to cat 40 different files :)  [unfortunately I think this means I 
am disagreeing with you ;)]

I do grant you it would make various __init sections and in-memory 
structures smaller if we eliminated the names...   do we want to?  Sure 
we have lseisa and lspci and lsusb, et. al.  Does that obviate the need 
for a simple summary of attached hardware?

	Jeff



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