> As the application user and/or programmer I should not have to know
> that some low-level driver talks to one set, and another to some
> other set, nor even how many are in any given set.

> As the systems programmer in charge of a given system I'm able to
> lock down the assignments of given ranges of /dev/ttyN nodes to given
> low-level drivers, and I can lock those low-level drivers to given
> hardware mappings.

And you can do that today, with no kernel changes, by locking down all
tty device attachments in your kernel config (which you'll need to do
anyway) and then using ln, ln -s, and/or mv in /dev.

> I really do want one minor number for all the serial ports in the
> system.

ITYM "major number", and I can't see why userland would care whether
they do or don't.

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