Re: [patch] inotify.

John McCutchan
2005-06-17T17:48:57Z

On Fri, Jun 17, 2005 at 07:07:38PM +0200, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> On Dunnersdag 16 Juni 2005 20:25, Robert Love wrote:
> > +Q: Why a device node?
> > +
> > +A: The second biggest problem with dnotify is that the user
> > +interface sucks ass. ?Signals are a terrible, terrible interface
> > +for file notification. ?Or for anything, for that matter. ?The
> > +idea solution, from all perspectives, is a file descriptor based
> > +one that allows basic file I/O and poll/select. ?Obtaining the
> > +fd and managing the watches could of been done either via a
> > +device file or a family of new system calls. ?We decided to
> > +implement a device file because adding three or four new system
> > +calls that mirrored open, close, and ioctl seemed silly. ?A
> > +character device makes sense from user-space and was easy to
> > +implement inside of the kernel.
>
> Sorry to bring up a topic that should have been settled a long time ago.
>

This was settled a long time ago. Robert, Andrew, and I had an off-list
discussion months ago, and we all agreed that this was the right
interface for inotify.

John