Re: [GIT PATCH] Remove devfs from 2.6.12-git

[Bill Gatliff <bgat@billgatliff.com>]

Andrew:


> > It breaks a lot of my embedded setups which have read-only storage only
> > and thus need /dev on devfs or tmpfs.
> >    
>
> Well that's quite a problem.  We're certainly causing people such as
> yourself to take on quite a lot of work.  But on the other hand we do want
> the kernel to progress sanely, and that sometimes involves taking things
> out.
>
> I don't have enough info to know whether the world would be a better place
> if we keep devfs, remove devfs or remove devfs even later on.  I don't
> think anyone knows, which is why we're taking this little
> disable-it-and-see-who-shouts approach.
>  

I would prefer to keep devfs around as well, but most of my embedded 
systems have enough RAM to put a primitive /dev tree in tmpfs using a 
linuxrc script at boot.  The workarounds for the userland requirements 
of udev are a little less clear to me, but I'm not sure they're 
insurmountable yet for anything except the smallest embedded systems, 
since Busybox appears to have some udev support available now.

I think that devfs and udev appeal to different audiences, hence I don't 
think you can say that the "world will be a better place" with one or 
the other.  It would be nice to find a way to have the two coexist 
peacefully...

Case in point.  I'm going to udev reluctantly; all my embedded work 
based on earlier kernels used devfs exclusively.


b.g.

--
Bill Gatliff
So what part of:
  $ make oldconfig clean dep zImage
do you not understand?
bgat@billgatliff.com

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