From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261610AbVCHGNY (ORCPT ); Tue, 8 Mar 2005 01:13:24 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261703AbVCHGMr (ORCPT ); Tue, 8 Mar 2005 01:12:47 -0500 Received: from waste.org ([216.27.176.166]:44714 "EHLO waste.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261610AbVCHGMK (ORCPT ); Tue, 8 Mar 2005 01:12:10 -0500 Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2005 22:11:55 -0800 From: Matt Mackall To: Christoph Hellwig , Andrew Morton , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, viro@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk Subject: Re: [PATCH] unified device list allocator Message-ID: <20050308061155.GK3120@waste.org> References: <20050308051818.GI3120@waste.org> <20050307213302.560de053.akpm@osdl.org> <20050308054325.GA1262@infradead.org> <20050307215035.345c3f63.akpm@osdl.org> <20050308055627.GA1515@infradead.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20050308055627.GA1515@infradead.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.6+20040907i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org 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.