From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Jan 30 15:01:20 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA08134 for hackers-outgoing; Thu, 30 Jan 1997 15:01:20 -0800 (PST) Received: from sax.sax.de (sax.sax.de [193.175.26.33]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id PAA08107 for ; Thu, 30 Jan 1997 15:01:17 -0800 (PST) Received: (from uucp@localhost) by sax.sax.de (8.6.12/8.6.12-s1) with UUCP id AAA07037; Fri, 31 Jan 1997 00:01:14 +0100 Received: (from j@localhost) by uriah.heep.sax.de (8.8.4/8.6.9) id WAA28752; Thu, 30 Jan 1997 22:28:07 +0100 (MET) Message-ID: Date: Thu, 30 Jan 1997 22:28:07 +0100 From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch) To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org (FreeBSD hackers) Cc: mcgovern@spoon.beta.com (Brian J. McGovern) Subject: Re: Device Drivers 101 References: <199701300505.AAA09649@spoon.beta.com> <199701300601.QAA27658@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> X-Mailer: Mutt 0.55-PL10 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Phone: +49-351-2012 669 X-PGP-Fingerprint: DC 47 E6 E4 FF A6 E9 8F 93 21 E0 7D F9 12 D6 4E Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch) In-Reply-To: <199701300601.QAA27658@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au>; from Michael Smith on Jan 30, 1997 16:31:38 +1030 Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk As Michael Smith wrote: > Devfs doesn't really 'do' major and minor numbers; there's a logically > direct translation from the named node to your switch entry and the > unit number you supply when you create the node. Though, it's a very good idea to leave the major number assignment to devfs. The existing drivers don't do this yet, but i think once devfs is really up for the masses, we should walk through the tree and avoid hard allocations wherever possible. (I.e., almost everything except those devices the bootstrap code has builtin knowlege about.) I think you can achieve automatic major number assignment by passing -1 down to devfs. Julian might comment on this. -- cheers, J"org joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)