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Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2005 18:54:04 +0100
From: Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>
To: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>
Cc: Robert Love <rml@novell.com>, Zach Brown <zab@zabbo.net>,
       linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
       Al Viro <viro@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk>,
       John McCutchan <ttb@tentacle.dhs.org>, Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Subject: Re: [patch] inotify.
Message-ID: <20050617175404.GA19463@infradead.org>
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On Fri, Jun 17, 2005 at 07:07:38PM +0200, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> Sorry to bring up a topic that should have been settled a long time ago.
> 
> I found that the interface consisting of
>  - open a handle
>  - add a file descriptor with an event mask to handle
>  - remove a file/watch descriptor from handle
>  - wait on handle, get events
>  - close handle
> 
> in inotify is _very_ similar to how epoll is represented to user
> space. Is there a good reason that epoll is a set of syscalls while
> inotify is a character device, or is one of them simply wrong?

It's because Robert and John insist on their horrible interface and
simply ignore any feedback on how to do a better one.