Re: [patch 0/8] Nesting class_device patches that actually work

[Greg KH <gregkh@suse.de>]

On Sat, Oct 15, 2005 at 05:08:55PM +0200, Kay Sievers wrote:
> A lot! From general distro specific system-management to subsystem specific
> setup tools and tons of udev rules... There is definitely no chance to break
> /sys/class in _all_ subsystems by introducing subdirectories.

I agree.

> > Btw, is your proposal with moving it all into /sys/device less drastic?
> 
> Definitely, cause it keeps all the curent api! The only difference is that class-devices
> are reached by symlinks instead of real directories. The pathes to the devices are
> the same!

Ok, I've spent a while thinking about this proposal and originally I
thought it was the same thing we had heard years ago.  But I was wrong,
moving the class stuff into the device tree is the right thing to do, as
long as we keep them as new "things" in the tree (previous proposals
just had the /sys/class stuff as symlinks pointing to the devices
themselves, which would not work for a range of reasons.)

So, what to do now?  Here's my proposal for the future.

We figure out some way to agree on the input stuff, using class_device
and get that into 2.6.15.  Personally, I like the stuff I just did and
is in the -mm tree :)

But, if you think we can't break userspace by adding nested class
devices just yet, I agree, and can probably just put a symlink in
/sys/class/input to the nested devices, which will make everything "just
work".  I'll try that out later tonight and let you all know how it
goes.

Then, we move the class stuff into real devices.  There was always a lot
of duplication with the class and device code, and this shows that there
is a commonality there.  At the same time, I'll work on making the
attribute stuff easier and possibly merge the kobject and device
structures together a bit (possibly I said, I don't know quite how much
yet...)

But this second step is going to take a while, have to not break
everything along the way, and should hopefully clean up a lot of mess
tht the current driver core has.  I'd be glad to do it :)

Acceptable to everyone?

Oh, one tiny problem.  "virtual devices" are not currently represented
in our device tree, but are in the class tree.  Things like the
different vc and ttys and misc devices are examples of this.  I'll just
put them on the "platform" bus if no one minds.

thanks,

greg k-h

p.s.  Kay, that's the last time I mention to you that I didn't know what
I would be working on for the next few months...

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