From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S263695AbTDTU7G (ORCPT ); Sun, 20 Apr 2003 16:59:06 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S263696AbTDTU7G (ORCPT ); Sun, 20 Apr 2003 16:59:06 -0400 Received: from neon-gw-l3.transmeta.com ([63.209.4.196]:17674 "EHLO neon-gw.transmeta.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S263695AbTDTU7F (ORCPT ); Sun, 20 Apr 2003 16:59:05 -0400 To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org From: "H. Peter Anvin" Subject: Re: [CFT] more kdev_t-ectomy Date: 20 Apr 2003 14:10:36 -0700 Organization: Transmeta Corporation, Santa Clara CA Message-ID: References: <20030420133143.GF10374@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk> <20030420160034.GA20123@win.tue.nl> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Disclaimer: Not speaking for Transmeta in any way, shape, or form. Copyright: Copyright 2003 H. Peter Anvin - All Rights Reserved Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Followup to: <20030420160034.GA20123@win.tue.nl> By author: Andries Brouwer In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel > > Of course it may be possible to avoid kernel-internal numbers altogether. > Sometimes that is an improvement, sometimes not. Pointers are more > complicated than numbers - they point at something that must be allocated > and freed and reference counted. A number is like a pointer without the > reference counting. > I guess the question is: is there any point to have three forms -- with necessary conversions between them -- or is it simpler to have two forms and just use the more awkward dev_t form everywhere? The only use for dev_t's in the kernel should be getting them from or shipping them off to userspace at some point, so it might be just as easily to do the conversion directly -- macroized, of course. We do need a dev32_t for NFSv2 et al, though. -hpa -- at work, in private! "Unix gives you enough rope to shoot yourself in the foot." Architectures needed: ia64 m68k mips64 ppc ppc64 s390 s390x sh v850 x86-64