From owner-freebsd-arch Tue Oct 12 15:34:30 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 D0FC614C8D for ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 15:34:13 -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 AAA08636 for ; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 00:34:11 +0200 (CEST) Received: (from eivind@localhost) by bitbox.follo.net (8.8.8/8.8.6) id AAA33464 for freebsd-arch@freebsd.org; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 00:34:11 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from alpo.whistle.com (alpo.whistle.com [207.76.204.38]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8D7FD155E1 for ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 15:30:39 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from julian@whistle.com) Received: from current1.whiste.com (current1.whistle.com [207.76.205.22]) by alpo.whistle.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id PAA58769; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 15:27:55 -0700 (PDT) Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 15:27:54 -0700 (PDT) From: Julian Elischer To: Kirk McKusick Cc: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Subject: Re: The eventual fate of BLOCK devices. In-Reply-To: <199910122014.NAA15822@flamingo.McKusick.COM> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG (CC list trimmed to 'freebsd-arch') On Tue, 12 Oct 1999, Kirk McKusick wrote: > 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. The question is, "How much code will it clear up?" The opinions differ. and, just because we can't point out one at the moment doesn't mean that there aren't any. There is also the issue of Posix standards etc. is a 'Unix' supposed to have two kinds of devices? the standards certainly define block and character devices. might a process use block devices as a mething of allowing caching between multiple co-operating processes? > > Kirk McKusick > Julian To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message