Re: [patch] Incorrect mapping of serial ports to lines

[Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org>]

On Tue, Jun 29, 2004 at 03:13:13PM -0700, Jun Sun wrote:

> > > The NEC DDB Vrc-5074 (and probably the other DDB variants as well) has one
> > > serial port in the Nile 4 host bridge, and 2 serial ports in the Super I/O.
> > > 
> > > To me it sounds the most logical if the one in the Nile 4 is ttyS0.
> > 
> >  Then we need to find a way to make the order configurable somehow.
> 
> This is why I favor run-time serial port configuration.  My view
> (maybe a little dramatic) is to remove all static serial port definition
> and push them into board setup routine.  asm/serial.h only needs
> to define the number serial lines, which itself could be configurable.

<asm/serial.h> is on it's way out of the kernel - it's only a question of
time until either the current maintainer of the serial driver or somebody
with more time at hands will eleminate it.  And serial.h was always only
meant to handle the kind of serial interfaces of which you just have to
know that they're there because probing for it isn't possible.  Something
which these days is getting increasingly more rare thanks to PCI.

What I really wouldn't like to see is the runtime registration for all
the legacy serial stuff that possibly could be plugged into some board
be duplicated into half a dozen of systems ...

  Ralf