> I struggled with this a bit and decided that using `struct device *' in
	> some contexts and `struct devproplist *' in others broke orthogonality, 
	> encapsulation, and consistency.  

	I don't see why you'd use 'struct device' in any when dealing with the
	properties, actually.

The reason to use `struct device' is twofold: to allow searches for
properties to trickle up the deice tree, and to allow get_mdprop()
to locate a property associated with a device from some external
source, say the OpenFirmware device tree.

	> That would also
	> preclude any possibility of implemnting as anything other than a linked
	> list in future, such as database table.

	Why would it do that?

For MD properties stored in some other form, say in NVRAM.

	> Anyway, if you plan to replace the aux information with properties, it is
	> best to encode them as separate proerties rather than a fixed `aux'
	> structure.

	Yeah, that's fairly obvious.

	The case i'm most worried about is where you're passing down e.g. a
	'bus chipset' handle of some sort, and want to make sure it doesn't
	accidentally get nuked while you're still using it...

That's a really nasty problem that is likely unsolvable without
global refcounts or garbage collection....

Edaurdo