Re: Adding PCMCIA support to the kernel tree -- developers needed.

[Miles Lane <miles@megapathdsl.net>]

Andrew Morton wrote:

[...]


> - I'm only talking about netdevices.  What happens with other
>   types of device if the discovery order is randomised?  I
>   dunno.

It appears that we currently only have representation of
USB, PCI, PCMCIA and Network driver/bus developers in this
discussion.  Is that as it should be?  It seems to me that
the topic of device detection and configuration is quite
important to get right for all hotpluggable busses.
Should we be extending invitations to others?

It's clear that there are major usability problems that 
arise from the lack of a MAC address equivalent for all 
hardware devices.  

As David Brownell mentioned, the typical usage pattern
(at least for USB) seems to be that just a few devices
are connected and usually not more than one device of
a given type.  The confusion sets in when there are
multiple USB mice, keyboards, videocams, etc.  If XFree86
ever gets support for multi-headed consoles with support
for dedicated mice and keyboards per console, getting the
mapping from physical device to logical device (for example,
/dev/input/mouse[1-4]) to stay consistent would be really
helpful.  I believe that this feature is actively being
developed for XFree86, BTW.

Probably the most that can be hoped for is that we develop 
a method of locking down the mapping between logical 
device interfaces for those devices that have unique 
identifiers.
	Miles


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