RE: 2.6.16rc5 'found' an extra CPU.

["Brown, Len" <len.brown@intel.com>]

>On Thursday 02 March 2006 06:49, Brown, Len wrote:
>
>> I'm afraid that even after we get this stuff out of /proc
>> and into sysfs where it belongs, we'll have to leave 
>/proc/acpi around
>> for a while b/c unfortunately people are under the impression
>> that the path names there actually mean something and
>> they can actually count on them -- which they can't.
>
>But they should. Once you provide an interface here you 
>have to provide it essentially forever. Or at least if you really
>change it use a very long deprecation period, but even that 
>is a bad thing to do to users.

The 4-character strings in the path names (eg "CPU0") are _arbitrary_.
They come _directly_ from the BIOS source code and depend
on whatever mood the BIOS writer was in that day.
For this reason, users _can't_ count on these strings
and these path-names being consistent across platforms.

Yes, this is a horrible design.
Yes, I want to delete it in favor of sysfs as soon as possible,
Patrick has a big patch set in development to get that ball rolling.
Yes, users kick and scream whenever you change something they can see
and thus it takes a long time.

-Len
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