On 15 Oct 2000, Chris G. Demetriou wrote:

> And, finally, as I've expressed before, I'm of a mind to have the
> tables defined neither statically nor at config time, but rather
> dynamically at run time from linker-assembled tables defined by
> drivers that need them.  there are a few reasons for this:

  Devices certainly need to be defined dynamically, however the basic
problem with major numbers is that they do not have any natural
relationship to what the device actually is and therefore are much more
likely to clash with other devices than if names are used.  While an
arbitration protocol is still necessary in case they do clash, using
numbers to identify devices just makes such an occurance more likely
without any benefit (other then possibly being somewhat less work to
implement).

Matthew Orgass
darkstar@pgh.net