Subject: Re: dev_t changes & partitions
To: Bill Studenmund <wrstuden@vali.stanford.edu>
From: Charles M. Hannum <mycroft@mit.edu>
List: tech-kern
Date: 01/15/1998 02:01:50
Bill Studenmund <wrstuden@vali.stanford.edu> writes:

> 
> True. But then we will be splicing minor numbers together until we move to
> 64-bit dev_t's. :-) That just seems kinda goofy.

If `seems kinda goofy' is the best argument anyone can come up with,
I'd say that's flat out ridiculous.  You're *going* to screw over
users by making old MAKEDEVs DTWT.  Making the device numbers look
`pretty' in hex is, quite frankly, a *stupid* reason to screw over
users.

> > P.S.  We have, in fact, deprecated device numbers before.  But this
> > was years ago, when it wouldn't have had the potential to confuse
> > thousands of users, and it wasn't quite as trivial to provide an
> > upgrade path.
> 
> When was it?

It was when the lms and mms drivers were fixed (by me) to use
IO_NDELAY rather than a flag bit in the minor number (which someone
inconveniently made the *low* bit) to select a non-blocking device.
Of course, in practice, nobody ever used lms1 or mms1, so it didn't
bite anyway AFAIK.