Re: Russell King forks ARM Linux.

[Philipp Rumpf]

On Wed, Sep 27, 2000 at 02:30:13PM -0700, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> Russ is 100% correct that different drivers shouldn't use the
> same device numbers, unless they are:
> 
> a) mutually exclusive,
> b) interface compatible, *AND*
> c) handle all arbitration necessary.

This doesn't handle the watchdog driver case, but that's special anyway.
(All watchdog drivers use the same device number, which has the nice effect
of not loading the softdog driver when you have a real hardware watchdog and
a driver for it).

> If (a), (b) and (c) are all satisfied, it is often justified to share
> device numbers and device nodes.

Could this go into the next revision of Documentation/devices.txt ?  There
certainly doesn't seem to be a good place to point people to right now.

        Philipp Rumpf
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