Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S264376AbUADVFl (ORCPT ); Sun, 4 Jan 2004 16:05:41 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S264387AbUADVFl (ORCPT ); Sun, 4 Jan 2004 16:05:41 -0500 Received: from fw.osdl.org ([65.172.181.6]:57827 "EHLO mail.osdl.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S264376AbUADVFf (ORCPT ); Sun, 4 Jan 2004 16:05:35 -0500 Date: Sun, 4 Jan 2004 13:05:20 -0800 (PST) From: Linus Torvalds To: Andries Brouwer cc: Rob Love , rob@landley.net, Pascal Schmidt , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Greg KH Subject: Re: udev and devfs - The final word In-Reply-To: <20040104142111.A11279@pclin040.win.tue.nl> Message-ID: References: <1072972440.3975.29.camel@fur> <20040103040013.A3100@pclin040.win.tue.nl> <20040103141029.B3393@pclin040.win.tue.nl> <20040104000840.A3625@pclin040.win.tue.nl> <20040104034934.A3669@pclin040.win.tue.nl> <20040104142111.A11279@pclin040.win.tue.nl> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1435 Lines: 37 On Sun, 4 Jan 2004, Andries Brouwer wrote: > > On Sat, Jan 03, 2004 at 07:04:17PM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote: > > > > I agree that for a stable kernel we should then go back to "best effort" > > mode, where for simple politeness reasons we should try to keep device > > numbers as stable as we can. > > Good - you understand now. Oh, _I_ always understood. You were the one that was arguing for stable numbers as somehow important. I'm just telling you that they aren't stable, and that a user application that depends on their stability or their uniqieness is BROKEN. > So, the right setup - you call it politeness, I call it quality > of implementation - is to have both stable names and stable numbers, > in as many cases as possible. And I still disagree. You seem to think that this is an "absolute goodness", and call it a quality issue. While I personally strongly believe that it is a bug in user space to care, and that it is not a quality issue at all, but rather a "allow buggy and/or nonconverted user space to work". In other words, it's not about "quality", as much as about compatibility with applications that are old and/or braindead. Big difference. Linus - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/