Re: Switching from IOCTLs to a RAMFS

[Jeff Garzik]

Peter Chubb wrote:

>>>>>>"Jeff" == Jeff Garzik <[e-mail]> 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