[TUHS] Device special files

[itz@very.loosely.org (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.

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