From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S265094AbTLKOz6 (ORCPT ); Thu, 11 Dec 2003 09:55:58 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S265098AbTLKOz6 (ORCPT ); Thu, 11 Dec 2003 09:55:58 -0500 Received: from [195.255.196.126] ([195.255.196.126]:31953 "EHLO gw.compusonic.fi") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S265094AbTLKOzx (ORCPT ); Thu, 11 Dec 2003 09:55:53 -0500 Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 16:54:54 +0200 (EET) From: Hannu Savolainen X-X-Sender: hannu@zeus.compusonic.fi To: viro@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk Cc: Linus Torvalds , Larry McVoy , Andre Hedrick , Arjan van de Ven , Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu, Kendall Bennett , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Driver API (was Re: Linux GPL and binary module exception clause?) In-Reply-To: <20031211133307.GK4176@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk> Message-ID: References: <20031210175614.GH6896@work.bitmover.com> <20031210180822.GI6896@work.bitmover.com> <20031210183833.GJ6896@work.bitmover.com> <20031211100627.GJ4176@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk> <20031211133307.GK4176@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Thu, 11 Dec 2003 viro@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk wrote: > On Thu, Dec 11, 2003 at 02:47:49PM +0200, Hannu Savolainen wrote: > > > In a charcter driver all you need to know from the inode structure is > > basicly just the device (minor) number. It's not hard to implement the > > ABI layer so that the minor number can be provided regardless of the > > changes made to the kernel behind it. > > Not good enough (if you want a demonstration, check USB character devices > and the nightmare stuff happening around handling of minor->object mapping > there). I'm not talking about USB character devices. I'm not talking about hot-plugging. For sure it will be very difficult or even impossible to handle this kind of issues. I'm only talking about simple character device drivers. Ok, you can remove the major/minor mechanism entirely from Linux. Then we have a problem but I'm sure there will be some easy workaround even then. Best regards, Hannu ----- Hannu Savolainen (hannu@opensound.com) http://www.opensound.com (Open Sound System (OSS)) http://www.compusonic.fi (Finnish OSS pages) OH2GLH QTH: Karkkila, Finland LOC: KP20CM