From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Thu, 23 May 2002 03:47:55 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Thu, 23 May 2002 03:47:55 -0400 Received: from [195.63.194.11] ([195.63.194.11]:54791 "EHLO mail.stock-world.de") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Thu, 23 May 2002 03:47:53 -0400 Message-ID: <3CEC8FB2.8090900@evision-ventures.com> Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 08:44:02 +0200 From: Martin Dalecki User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; pl-PL; rv:1.0rc1) Gecko/20020419 X-Accept-Language: en-us, pl MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Rusty Russell CC: Alexander Viro , alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk, davem@redhat.com, paulus@samba.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [PATCH] 2.5.17 /dev/ports In-Reply-To: <20020523173033.6635611a.rusty@rustcorp.com.au> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Uz.ytkownik Rusty Russell napisa?: > On Wed, 22 May 2002 10:54:25 -0400 (EDT) > Alexander Viro wrote: > >>On Wed, 22 May 2002, Alan Cox wrote: >> >>>XFree86 uses /proc/cpuinfo, /proc/bus/pci, /proc/mtrr, /proc/fb, /proc/dri >>>and even such goodies as /proc/sys/dev/mac_hid/keyboard_sends_linux_keycodes >> >>... and while we are at flamewar-mongering, none of these files have any >>business being in procfs. > > > Let it never be said that you lack courage 8) > > Let's sort this out at the kernel summit: > dev vs. driverfs. vs proc vs sysctl vs boot params vs. module params vs netlink There isn't that much to be discussed there. 1. /proc is for process data becouse this has inherently a tree structure and the FS abstractis is fitting this nicely. (We can share code with the VFS layer therefore.) 2. /proc/sys is justifyed by the fact that sysctl can share a significant amount of code with the procfs implementation. Note this *could* be changed by abstracting the common code out of *both* procfs and sysctl instead of stacking sysctl on to of procfs. 3. /proc/bus is superceeded by driverfs but has a tree struct and one can life with it. The rest is utter crap and legacy. Technically at least. In particular the stuff listed above is looking like things which are in reality device access abstractions and which belongs therefore to /dev/. The only problem here is - people without taste for the implementation, apparently love to look at files in /proc becouse this is giving them some feelings I can't share... PS. Did I mention that uniformity of interfaces is quite common in good design practice? And something beeing ASCII simple doesn't imply that it is an uniform interface.