2.4 To Pending Device Number Registrants

[bert hubert]

On Mon, May 14, 2001 at 11:58:39PM +0100, Alan Cox wrote:
> Yet another 2.5 project. If Linus wants to go play with name driven devices
> and you want to help him great, but if he'd care to put out
> linux-2.5.0.tar.gz _before_ starting that would be good for all of us

Well, that's one thing. 2.4 will not need userspace changes internally, so
any funky major/minor number dynamic allocation stuff needs to be solved
without userspace help. This probably rules out most everything, unless a
setup is found that will special case all of /dev/ currently existing.

So I would think that this block of new major number allocations holds for
2.5 and not 2.4. Also, if I'm correct, 2.4 won't be needing a lot of new
major numbers anyhow.

This all means that a lot of the current hubbub is unjustified - 2.5 is not
there yet. Yes there is urgency and this way of forcing discussion is a very
Linus-eque way of trying to achieve something.

But unless I'm wrong, there is no way that this can affect a 2.4 without
userspace changes which have historically been considered forbidden within a
stable series.

Regards,

bert

-- 
http://www.PowerDNS.com      Versatile DNS Services  
Trilab                       The Technology People   
'SYN! .. SYN|ACK! .. ACK!' - the mating call of the internet