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Date:      Sat, 14 Feb 1998 20:43:16 -0500 (EST)
From:      "John S. Dyson" <toor@dyson.iquest.net>
To:        bde@zeta.org.au (Bruce Evans)
Cc:        dyson@FreeBSD.ORG, wollman@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu, committers@FreeBSD.ORG, eivind@yes.no
Subject:   Re: devfs persistence
Message-ID:  <199802150143.UAA00354@dyson.iquest.net>
In-Reply-To: <199802150115.MAA10615@godzilla.zeta.org.au> from Bruce Evans at "Feb 15, 98 12:15:39 pm"

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Bruce Evans said:
> >There are (at least) two usages of FreeBSD.  One is standard U**X type
> >things, and the other is embedded controllers.  DEVFS is especially
> >useful for embedded (not all NFS servers can provide device nodes, for
> >example.)
> 
> Use mfs.
> 
That is a non-starter, and only adds yet another layer of complexity.  Devfs
is a good idea for certain applications.  (Have *you* actually used MFS in
an embedded application, with heterogeneous products, mostly (only) to support
device nodes?, answer: it is a kludge.)

It is an issue of being able to cleanly and straightforwardly support embedded
products.  Of course, MFS can be used, but it isn't all that good a solution.
I am looking for supporting a better solution.  If we can come up with a better
alternative than DEVFS, I would be for that.  MFS as it is today, isn't the
answer.

I don't think that devfs is something that we should always use on a GP system,
so we still need to support a non-devfs capability (and likely that (the non-devfs)
will be the primary usage.)

Sort of like echo and other filter type UNIX shell tools don't make a good text
editor, using std disk or NFS filesystem nodes for devices don't make it as clean
and easy for supporting certain kinds of embedded products.


-- 
John                  | Never try to teach a pig to sing,
dyson@freebsd.org     | it just makes you look stupid,
jdyson@nc.com         | and it irritates the pig.

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