Message-ID: <44DCA67B.5070400@rtr.ca>
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2006 11:47:07 -0400
From: Mark Lord <lkml@rtr.ca>
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To: Jeff Garzik <jeff@garzik.org>
Cc: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
       linux-ide@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Merging libata PATA support into the base kernel
References: <1155144599.5729.226.camel@localhost.localdomain> <44DA4288.6020806@rtr.ca> <44DACE9F.3090909@garzik.org>
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Jeff Garzik wrote:
> Mark Lord wrote:
>> This will also allow time for things like "udev" to perhaps think about
>> an option to someday provide /dev/hd* symlinks for PATA devices when
>> libata is used instead of IDE (?).  That might be a possible migration
>> path in the far future.
> 
> Unfortunately a symlink won't work because of compatibility issues. 
> /dev/hd supports more partitions, and a different set of ioctls.

Anything that depends upon the extra partitions is going to have a 
difficult time regardless of whether or not they edit /etc/fstab
to change "hda" into "sda" etc..

And libata already has sufficient ioctl compatibility for nearly all
purposes with the old drivers/ide stuff.  Yes, there are some more
esoteric ioctls that I once implemented in drivers/ide that do not
exist for libata, and nobody will miss them.

Cheers
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