From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Jan 14 14:42:05 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C1D2916A498 for ; Mon, 14 Jan 2008 14:42:05 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd-current@m.gmane.org) Received: from ciao.gmane.org (main.gmane.org [80.91.229.2]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 69E8113C4E9 for ; Mon, 14 Jan 2008 14:42:05 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd-current@m.gmane.org) Received: from list by ciao.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.43) id 1JEQVk-00007P-0F for freebsd-current@freebsd.org; Mon, 14 Jan 2008 14:42:00 +0000 Received: from www.creo.hu ([217.113.62.14]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Mon, 14 Jan 2008 14:41:59 +0000 Received: from csaba-ml by www.creo.hu with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Mon, 14 Jan 2008 14:41:59 +0000 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org From: Csaba Henk Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2008 14:41:53 +0000 (UTC) Lines: 23 Message-ID: References: <1200197787.67286.13.camel@shumai.marcuscom.com> <20080113182457.GN929@server.vk2pj.dyndns.org> <200801141254.20400.doconnor@gsoft.com.au> <478AE741.1000105@comcast.net> X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: www.creo.hu User-Agent: slrn/0.9.8.1 (FreeBSD) Sender: news Subject: Re: RFC: Adding a hw.features[2] sysctl X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2008 14:42:05 -0000 On 2008-01-14, Igor Mozolevsky wrote: > On 14/01/2008, Nathan Lay wrote: > >> cat'ing /dev/cpuinfo sounds reminiscent to Linux /proc. > > No it doesn't - it's a perfectly fine Unix way of doing things... The > purpose of /dev is to provide an interface to the devices on the > machine, (query-capable-)CPU is a device... Having /proc as an > interface to the kernel on the other hand... Hm, I just fail to see the how the ioctl interface is different from the sysctl interface in terms of semantic capabilites. AFAICS you can syntactically transform some hypothetic ioctl call on a /dev/ entry to a hypothethic sysctl invocation and vica versa. So for me it seems to be just a matter of preference and style. And you just _can't_ deny that defining a sysctl adheres more to FreeBSD's conventions than adding a fancy new /dev node just to be ioctl'd. Csaba