[TUHS] Device special files

[Ian Zimmerman]

On 2018-02-07 19:36, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:

> Going from ``hardware only changes when the DEC Field engineer is
> here'' to ``my toaster has USB'' has put serious strain on the rather
> crude implementation of the ``devices as files'' concept

Well, if you don't try to connect your toaster to the computer, you
don't have this problem :-)

I had a self-maintained Linux system (ie. no distribution) until about
2000.  I had no problem understanding what the two dozen /dev/ entries
were for.  I even wrote a better (table driven) makedev implementation
and I tried to get it into Debian, but by that time rumors of devfs were
already on the way so it wasn't worth a transition to them.

The real problem with static /dev is on the development side IMO -
managing the namespace of device names and major/minor numbers.

-- 
Please don't Cc: me privately on mailing lists and Usenet,
if you also post the followup to the list or newsgroup.
To reply privately _only_ on Usenet, fetch the TXT record for the domain.