Subject: Re: dev/MAKEDEV not portable
To: Not for internal consumption <greywolf@starwolf.starwolf.com>
From: Todd Vierling <tv@pobox.com>
List: current-users
Date: 12/23/1997 21:42:47
On Mon, 22 Dec 1997, Not for internal consumption wrote:
: * That makes significantly less sense than a perl script (which I don't
: * particularly like, either; there's no guarantee that systems' 'mknod'
: * binaries won't do something behind your back that you can't correct
: * for -- and I think i've seen systems do such things in the past 8-).
I didn't think about this. A properly installed perl binary on any host
system will have a direct mknod() call that just calls the kernel...! No
ned to call a mknod binary.
: I can't imagine that a mknod(2) call would do such things; such systems
: I would consider BAD (Broken As Designed).
I think cgd was thinking of execing mknod(8)/mknod(1m), not calling
mknod(2). I think? :)
: But if you write it in a simplistic way such that it didn't need to
: reference any {machine,platform}-specific #include files, what's the
: problem? Sure you can't compile OUR mknod, but how about a minimalist
: version which can handle the -n major-bits -w devwidth-bits?
Well, why not a Bourne shell script that _does_ know what a given OS does
with its args to mknod(8)/mknod(1m)?
=====
===== Todd Vierling (Personal tv@pobox.com; Business tv@lucent.com) =====
== "There's a myth that there is a scarcity of justice to go around, so
== that if we extend justice to 'those people,' it will somehow erode the
== quality of justice everyone else receives." -- Maria Price