On Tue, 13 Jan 1998, Perry E. Metzger wrote:

: Again and again, WHY? dev_t's have been 32 bit opaque values for the
: longest time -- we just didn't use the top bits. There is no reason to
: do this sort of thing. The *only* thing we need COMPAT_ for is to
: instruct the kernel to honor old device numbers for a while. It is
: true that an old mknod binary will lose on a new machine. "So what?"

There will be a 32->16 bit conversion of some sort to give `some reasonable
values' to userland for tty identification.  Since there may be more than
one pty system in the future, it is important that compat binaries can find
their tty through ttyname()/ptsname() if the OS/version only supports 16 bit
dev_t's.  This conversion will, however, only exist in
compat/common/vfs_syscalls_43.c.  (Not for NetBSD.)

=====
===== Todd Vierling (Personal tv@pobox.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