Re: Driver API (was Re: Linux GPL and binary module exception clause?)

Hannu Savolainen
2003-12-11T14:55:58Z

On Thu, 11 Dec 2003 viro@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 11, 2003 at 02:47:49PM +0200, Hannu Savolainen wrote:
>
> > In a charcter driver all you need to know from the inode structure is
> > basicly just the device (minor) number. It's not hard to implement the
> > ABI layer so that the minor number can be provided regardless of the
> > changes made to the kernel behind it.
>
> Not good enough (if you want a demonstration, check USB character devices
> and the nightmare stuff happening around handling of minor->object mapping
> there).
I'm not talking about USB character devices. I'm not talking about
hot-plugging. For sure it will be very difficult or even impossible to
handle this kind of issues. I'm only talking about simple character
device drivers. Ok, you can remove the major/minor mechanism entirely from
Linux. Then we have a problem but I'm sure there will be some easy
workaround even then.

Best regards,

Hannu
-----
Hannu Savolainen (hannu@opensound.com)
http://www.opensound.com (Open Sound System (OSS))
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