Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S265621AbUAFE2e (ORCPT ); Mon, 5 Jan 2004 23:28:34 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S265699AbUAFE2e (ORCPT ); Mon, 5 Jan 2004 23:28:34 -0500 Received: from parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk ([195.92.249.252]:33437 "EHLO www.linux.org.uk") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S265621AbUAFE2c (ORCPT ); Mon, 5 Jan 2004 23:28:32 -0500 Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2004 04:28:31 +0000 From: viro@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk To: Linus Torvalds Cc: Andries Brouwer , Daniel Jacobowitz , Rob Love , rob@landley.net, Pascal Schmidt , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Greg KH Subject: Re: udev and devfs - The final word Message-ID: <20040106042831.GI4176@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk> References: <20040105030737.GA29964@nevyn.them.org> <20040105132756.A975@pclin040.win.tue.nl> <20040105205228.A1092@pclin040.win.tue.nl> <20040106001326.A1128@pclin040.win.tue.nl> <20040106005944.GH4176@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2020 Lines: 39 On Mon, Jan 05, 2004 at 05:17:20PM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote: > > > On Tue, 6 Jan 2004 viro@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk wrote: > > > > Cute. There's a little issue of, say it, meaningful relationship between > > sda and sda4, completely lost that way. And _that_ has nothing to do with > > device enumeration. > > Oh, don't look too closely at some pseudo-code, it's not like the code > would actually do that for a minor number. But for things like major > number allocation for disk devices, it might not be too far off. And we > migth even want to start off the minors at some "random" offset (obviously > while keeping the alignment right for the partition handling) True, but... Let me put it that way - entire area is a minefield and I would really like to avoid nasty surprises from "obvious" patches, what with having just spent 4 months dealing with the fallout from one such beast. Let's clean the things up first; then it will be easier to see what can and should be done. Sure thing, reducing amount of places that deal with device numbers is a good thing. Let's see how far we can get it, what obstacles still remain (and during 2.5 a _lot_ of them had been killed) and what is needed to remove the rest. Once they are gone (and that will be one-by-one, keeping the list of things to grep for and checking the results of greps as we go) - then we'll have cleaner playing field for any experiments in that area. _And_ there will be less temptation to play the bundling games for everyone involved (cf. devfs disaster, aka. "my glorious idea allows to do $NEEDED_THING that way; merge the entire thing and nevermind the fact that doing $NEEDED_THING essentially the same way is possible without the rest of patch and can be split out of it"). - 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/