Re: udev and devfs - The final word

Linus Torvalds
2004-01-04T21:05:41Z

On Sun, 4 Jan 2004, Andries Brouwer wrote:
>
> On Sat, Jan 03, 2004 at 07:04:17PM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> >
> > I agree that for a stable kernel we should then go back to "best effort"
> > mode, where for simple politeness reasons we should try to keep device
> > numbers as stable as we can.
>
> Good - you understand now.

Oh, _I_ always understood. You were the one that was arguing for stable
numbers as somehow important. I'm just telling you that they aren't
stable, and that a user application that depends on their stability or
their uniqieness is BROKEN.

> So, the right setup - you call it politeness, I call it quality
> of implementation - is to have both stable names and stable numbers,
> in as many cases as possible.

And I still disagree. You seem to think that this is an "absolute
goodness", and call it a quality issue.

While I personally strongly believe that it is a bug in user space to
care, and that it is not a quality issue at all, but rather a "allow buggy
and/or nonconverted user space to work".

In other words, it's not about "quality", as much as about compatibility
with applications that are old and/or braindead. Big difference.

Linus