From owner-freebsd-arch Tue Oct 12 14:49:35 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from ns1.yes.no (ns1.yes.no [195.204.136.10]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B259215129 for ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 14:49:05 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from eivind@bitbox.follo.net) Received: from bitbox.follo.net (bitbox.follo.net [195.204.143.218]) by ns1.yes.no (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id XAA07951 for ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 23:48:59 +0200 (CEST) Received: (from eivind@localhost) by bitbox.follo.net (8.8.8/8.8.6) id XAA33120 for freebsd-arch@freebsd.org; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 23:48:43 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from knecht.sendmail.org (knecht.sendmail.org [209.31.233.160]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0842714DE9; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 14:48:07 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mckusick@flamingo.McKusick.COM) Received: from flamingo.McKusick.COM (root@flamingo.mckusick.com [209.31.233.178]) by knecht.sendmail.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id OAA02290; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 14:48:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from flamingo.McKusick.COM (mckusick@localhost.concentric.net [127.0.0.1]) by flamingo.McKusick.COM (8.9.3/8.9.0) with ESMTP id NAA15822; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 13:14:41 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199910122014.NAA15822@flamingo.McKusick.COM> To: Julian Elischer Subject: Re: The eventual fate of BLOCK devices. Cc: Bruce Evans , Matthew Dillon , freebsd-arch@freebsd.org, committers@freebsd.org, current@freebsd.org In-reply-to: Your message of "Sun, 10 Oct 1999 18:21:04 PDT." <199910110121.SAA18665@apollo.backplane.com> Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 13:14:40 -0700 From: Kirk McKusick Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG I would like to take a step back from the debate for a moment and ask the bigger question: How many real-world applications actually use the block device interface? I know of none whatsoever. All the filesystem utilities go out of their way to avoid the block device and use the raw interface. Does anyone on this list know of any programs that need/want the block interface? If there are none, or only very obscure ones, then it seems pointless to waste any kernel code supporting them. Indeed it will clean up a good deal of code to get rid of them. Kirk McKusick To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message