Linux-kernel mailing list archive 2000-15,: Re: devfs - why not ?

# Re: devfs - why not ?

John Alvord (jalvo@mbay.net)
Wed, 12 Apr 2000 21:09:59 GMT

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On Wed, 12 Apr 2000 14:20:04 -0600, Richard Gooch
<rgooch@ras.ucalgary.ca> wrote:

>Ricky Beam writes:
>> On Tue, 11 Apr 2000, George Bonser wrote:
>> >> (mounting it under /devfs instead of /dev) and there still seem to
>> >> be many people opposed to devfs.
>>
>> And I'm one of them...
>
>Here we go again.

I attempted to send this directly to Robert Kaiser, but it didn't seem
to get through. I am an onlooker in the devfs wars, but it looks like
this:

Richard fought for inclusion for nearly two years. All of Linus'
lieutenants were vigorously opposed. In the meantime he got a lot of
real world users to use it and advocate it. Linus waited for consensus
but it never came. He apparently thinks it is a good step away from
the relatively primitive /dev system and makes Linux ready for the new
hot-plug world.

The nay-sayers said it was inefficient (which Gooch disproved, both
for space and time). They said it was ugly (as if /dev is not). They
said there were much better schemes (but never produced any). Finally,
they said it didn't actually solve any real world problems (the
dedicated users were pretty good proof to me...). Finally, there is a
technical argument about how permissions are set on entries.

Now the nay-sayers are refusing to use it and hoping publically that
the major distributions like Redhat and Suse will not install it by
default.

My own guess, is that it is too much like a solaris feature and that
is somehow a bad thing. Linus is more pragmatic. When Linus decided to
let it in, he changed the name scheme to what he wanted and took out a
bunch of compatibility names (purged to a devfsd deamon). That pissed
off some folks who had difficulty during install.

This is actually a very good example of forcing the boss to make a
decision and then having to live with it. Clearly handling the
hot-plug issue is a critical need, and moving away from the
(relatively) primative /dev and numbers scheme is a great goodness.

john alvord

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