From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S262013AbVFWCWA (ORCPT ); Wed, 22 Jun 2005 22:22:00 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261818AbVFWCTT (ORCPT ); Wed, 22 Jun 2005 22:19:19 -0400 Received: from saturn.billgatliff.com ([209.251.101.200]:16574 "EHLO saturn.billgatliff.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261930AbVFWCOG (ORCPT ); Wed, 22 Jun 2005 22:14:06 -0400 Message-ID: <42BA1ADB.6090006@billgatliff.com> Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2005 21:13:47 -0500 From: Bill Gatliff User-Agent: Debian Thunderbird 1.0.2 (X11/20050602) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [GIT PATCH] Remove devfs from 2.6.12-git References: <20050621062926.GB15062@kroah.com> <20050620235403.45bf9613.akpm@osdl.org> <20050621151019.GA19666@kroah.com> <20050623010031.GB17453@mikebell.org> <20050622181825.204fbcb7.akpm@osdl.org> In-Reply-To: <20050622181825.204fbcb7.akpm@osdl.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Andrew: >>It breaks a lot of my embedded setups which have read-only storage only >>and thus need /dev on devfs or tmpfs. >> >> > >Well that's quite a problem. We're certainly causing people such as >yourself to take on quite a lot of work. But on the other hand we do want >the kernel to progress sanely, and that sometimes involves taking things >out. > >I don't have enough info to know whether the world would be a better place >if we keep devfs, remove devfs or remove devfs even later on. I don't >think anyone knows, which is why we're taking this little >disable-it-and-see-who-shouts approach. > > I would prefer to keep devfs around as well, but most of my embedded systems have enough RAM to put a primitive /dev tree in tmpfs using a linuxrc script at boot. The workarounds for the userland requirements of udev are a little less clear to me, but I'm not sure they're insurmountable yet for anything except the smallest embedded systems, since Busybox appears to have some udev support available now. I think that devfs and udev appeal to different audiences, hence I don't think you can say that the "world will be a better place" with one or the other. It would be nice to find a way to have the two coexist peacefully... Case in point. I'm going to udev reluctantly; all my embedded work based on earlier kernels used devfs exclusively. b.g. -- Bill Gatliff So what part of: $ make oldconfig clean dep zImage do you not understand? bgat@billgatliff.com