Re: [PATCH] eliminate pci_dev name

[Linus Torvalds]

On Thu, 14 Nov 2002, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> 
> Sure, I can do that.  That leads me to think that maybe we should
> delete name from struct device and just use the one in struct kobject
> (which is already a mere 16 bytes).  But if we're going to go as far
> down as the kobject... that has a dentry.  And dentrys have names.
> So how about eliminating that too and just creating a dentry with the
> almost infinitely long name?

I like your thinking, but the "pci->name" is really just a descrition, and
what should maybe be in the kobject is the "address", which is
"pci->slotname". The two are quite fundamentally different (ie nobody 
should depend on "name" being unique or constant anything like that, while 
"slotname" is really a bus-level address (*)).

			Linus

(*) "slotname" is also not unique in general, it's only unique _within_ 
_that_ _bus_. With multiple PCI buses, for example, you can have two 
devices with the same slotname, if they are on separate segments.