Re: [PATCH] unified device list allocator

[Matt Mackall <mpm@selenic.com>]

On Tue, Mar 08, 2005 at 05:56:27AM +0000, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 07, 2005 at 09:50:35PM -0800, Andrew Morton wrote:
> > > register_blkdev only happens at module_init time (and in fact should go
> > > away completely, so I'm not happy wit hthe surgey to keep it barely alive
> > > at all)
> > 
> > Is anyone working on that?
> 
> I had a patch from a long time ago that just killed it, but that one isn't
> useable for current users anymore.
> 
> There's two things it's doing currently:
> 
>  - when called with the major argument as 0 it returns an unused major number
>    from the top of the old 255 entries major list.  This should be replaced
>    by a real dynamic dev_t allocator, similar to alloc_chrdev_region.

Umm, this replaces alloc_chrdev_region too. If instead you mean "let's
migrate all the users to a sensible interface", I agree. And that
means killing alloc_chrdev_region too. (baseminor makes no sense for
dynamic allocation - you either know your prefered major and minor or
you know neither.)

>  - /proc/devices.  This interface has traditionally been used by things
>    like installer but these day's it's totally bogus as the one major, one
>    driver limitation got lifeted.  We'll probably have to deprecate it and
>    kill it in half a year or a similar timespan.

I think killing /proc/devices has to wait until after devfs removal,
when everyone is more or less comfortable with its alternatives.

-- 
Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time.