> It's technical merit will decide, or methinks maybe Linux isn't as good as
> I once thought.
> > They aren't files in the sense that they are stored on non-volitile
> >media. As in, in reality, they go away when you shut the machine down,
> >and come back when the machine boots up. If you boot off of a floppy an
> >OS that understands the root system, you won't see those files.
> They aren't files in terms of your definition, being "blocks of data
> residing on physical media, being presented in contiguous fashion via a
> named node called a file", but in the purest sense, they are as much a
> *special* file as anything.
They are files (weird ones) in the Unix tradition that devices are files.
[...]
> No it didn't. It lets drivers decide, and you can chown/chmod/ln etc to
> your heart's content, but persistence was handled by tar which worked
> beautifully via a standard FILESYSTEM INTERFACE.
The standard interface is that permissions stay put, even after reboots.
> >> So you like it. So do it that way. Don't be an ASSHOLE and say just
> >> because you don't like it that it CANT be in the kernel.
Fine example of the technical excellence and open-mindedness requested
above.
> > The same could be said about many things that would be bad to have in
> >the kernel.
> The saga of device fs involves people who for no better reason than
> emotional stupidity reject a better idea, not technical fault. It seems
> you are implying the current devfs would be bad to have in the
> kernel. Cite your reasons.
If technical reasons are given for disliking the idea, it is "emotional
stupidity", and the idea is "better" just because you say so.
Reasons against devfs:
- Permanent attributes are kludged on
- Breaks filesystem semantics in several ways, makes it very hard to check
ramifications
- Impacts system administration, making device managing a lot less Unixy
- Impacts _every_ single driver in the kernel, even if it isn't used
- What can be done with devfs can be done without it. Granted, it is less
convenient. But I add/remove devices from my machines perhaps once a
month, so that doesn't cut it for me.
Reasons for devfs:
- Makes handling hot-plug easier, but marginally so
- Unclutters /dev
Also: It is extra code, has to be maintained and updated, and has to be
accounted for in new driver developments. It _will_ add new bugs, even new
classes of bugs. This doesn't come for free.
Weighting the above, the answer for me is clearly "no".
-- Dr. Horst H. von Brand mailto:vonbrand@inf.utfsm.cl Departamento de Informatica Fono: +56 32 654431 Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria +56 32 654239 Casilla 110-V, Valparaiso, Chile Fax: +56 32 797513- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/