Re: Merging libata PATA support into the base kernel

[Mark Lord <lkml@rtr.ca>]

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