Re: Larger dev_t

Russell King
2001-03-27T22:44:37Z

On Tue, Mar 27, 2001 at 02:16:37PM -0800, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> Alan Cox wrote:
> > A major for 'disk' generically makes total sense. Classing raid controllers
> > as 'scsi' isnt neccessarily accurate. A major for 'serial ports' would also
> > solve a lot of misery
>
> But it might also cause just as much misery, specifically because things
> move around too much.

Actually, it probably won't. As has already been said in the past, the
names are effectively a user space issue, but major numbers aren't.

I for one would like to see a major number for all 'serial ports' whether
they be embedded ARM serial ports _or_ standard 16550 ports, but at the
moment its not easily acheivable without introducing more mess.

Ted indicated to me a while ago (just after I wrote serial_core.c for
yet-another-type-of-ARM-serial-port) his visions of the direction serial
stuff should take in 2.5; this is obviously one of the things that I'm
keen to discuss and solve in 2.5.

--
Russell King (rmk@arm.linux.org.uk) The developer of ARM Linux