At 08:42 AM 7/2/2001 +1000, Darren Reed wrote:

>I was mulling over a few things whilst having breakfast and it occurred
>to me that maybe it's time to get rid of in_protox[].  What's it used
>for ?  It's an array of ip protocol numbers that provide an index into
>in_proto[] so that inetsw[] doesn't need to be [256] with initializers
>all over the place.
>
>What I'd like to see would be for inetsw[] to become an array of pointers
>to struct protosw (struct protosw *inetsw[256]) and for this to be populated
>using a "protocol foo" type directive in kernel config files.  As a bonus,
>this allows protocols to be added on the fly at run time, making development
>of new ones easier, as LKMs.

Thta doesn't work.  a protosw is not indexable, it's a linear searchable
list.

>The config file statement would need to be capable of specifying ipv4 or
>ipv6, so maybe that should be "protocol tcp ipv6" (for example).
>
>I haven't thought thing through much further than this.  Is this a
>worthwhile change or just silliness ?

Silliness. :)  The semantics of protosw tables don't allow the change.
--
Matt Thomas               Internet:   matt@3am-software.com
3am Software Foundry      WWW URL:    http://www.3am-software.com/bio/matt/
Cupertino, CA             Disclaimer: I avow all knowledge of this message