"H. Peter Anvin" wrote:
>
> Followup to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> By author: John Byrne <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
> >
> > Anyway, one of the things I was hoping to find out by going to
> > linux-kernel was if there was anything other than devfs in the offing:
> > such a larger dev_t. So if anyone wants to chime in on things other than
> > devfs, I'd certainly like to hear about it.
> >
>
> A larger dev_t is a "must have" item for 2.5.
>
> -hpa
A couple of last details (sorry for being such a slug in following up):
1.) Any decision on what the bigger dev_t will be? 16-bit major and
16-bit minor, for example?
2.) Are there any plans to try to change the user dev_t to an opaque
type? Grepping through the Redhat distribution's application sources
reveals several things that compare major numbers determine the type of
the device. (Some explictly hardcoded; others use the constants in
linux/major.h, but compare several majors for IDE/SCSI.) To me, this
kind of explicit knowledge compiled into applications is something to be
avoided; even when there are relatively few applications that do this.
Of course, there is a strong argument for KISS, here: most of these
applications should work with a simple recompilation and the need for
multiple majors will be reduced once the bigger dev_t is introduced.
Thanks,
John
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