Re: Switching from IOCTLs to a RAMFS

Jeff Garzik (jgarzik@pobox.com)
Sun, 27 Oct 2002 19:18:36 -0500


Peter Chubb wrote:

>>>>>>"Jeff" == Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com> writes:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>
>
>Jeff> Like I touched on in IRC, there is room for both sysfs and per-driver
>Jeff> filesystems.
>
>Jeff> I think just about everyone agrees that ioctls are a bad idea and a huge
>Jeff> maintenance annoyance.
>
>I note that the P1003.26 ballot has just been announced...
>
> Title: P1003.26: Information Technology -- Portable Operating
> System Interface (POSIX) -- Part 26: Device Control
> Application Program Interface (API) [C Language]
>
> Scope: This work will define an application program interface to
> device drivers. The interface will be modeled on the
> traditional ioctl() function, but will have enhancements
> designed to address issues such as "type safety" and
> reentrancy.
>
>
>It may be worth looking at what the draft standard says before
>committing to yet another interface specification.
>
>

Already looked at it. It's awful, and retains many of the problems that
ioctl(2) presents to kernel maintainers.

I sent a comment in to the only email address I could find describing
the issues (politely!), but as a mere peon I doubt it will have much
effect. The best we can do is ignore this POSIX junk and hope it goes
away...

Jeff

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