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From: Segher Boessenkool <segher@kernel.crashing.org>
Subject: Re: lanana: Add major/minor entries for PPC QE UART devices
Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2007 17:43:57 +0100
To: Dan Malek <dan@embeddedalley.com>
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>> - Cap the driver at 4 UARTs;
>
> Let's do this, but design the code to
> allow more by just changing a #define.
>
>> Just randomly using some extra minors that aren't
>> assigned to you isn't such a great idea.
>
> Maybe for a desktop or generic server where
> you don't know what's going to be configured,
> but it's not unusual to do so with custom
> embedded systems.

You can do whatever you want in your own stuff
but that's not how things work in the mainstream
Linux kernel.

> The small experimental
> or user allocations often don't cover what
> is needed, so we just grab some allocation
> from a device that isn't ever going to be
> used on the system.

Sure I've done that myself a few times, but this
just doesn't fly for in-kernel drivers; those have
their own ranges defined in devices.txt and don't
use random other minors.


Segher