Re: LANANA: To Pending Device Number Registrants

Richard Gooch
2001-05-16T23:37:32Z

H. Peter Anvin writes:
> Richard Gooch wrote:
> > We have this aliasing anyway. sg and sr are just one example. If you
> > care about conflicts, then make sure the drivers lock each other out.
> > It's got nothing to do with the mechanism to find out whether
> > something can behave like a CD-ROM or not.
>
> No fscking way. What you're saying "well, my design is broken, so
> break your driver even further." You're suggesting prohibiting
> legal (and useful) operations because you're advocating an idiotic
> design to identify devices? Give me a break.

Erm, let's start again. My central point is that you can use devfs
names to reliably figure out what kind of device a FD is, as a cleaner
alternative to comparing major numbers. Therefore, I'm challenging the
notion that you need to reserve magic major numbers in order to
distinguish devices.

I suspect you're thinking about a different problem, which is finding
out what a device can do. Implementing some kind of capability list
may well be a good approach to *that* problem. There are some details
to figure out, like how multiple drivers interact with each other.
They could be tricky.

Now, with the above said, what operations do you think I'm
prohibiting?

Regards,

Richard....
Permanent: rgooch@atnf.csiro.au
Current: rgooch@ras.ucalgary.ca