lkml.org 
[lkml]   [1997]   [May]   [5]   [last100]   RSS Feed
Views: [wrap][no wrap]   [headers]  [forward] 
 
Messages in this thread
/
Date
From
SubjectRe: SCSI disk devices
   From: "Albert D. Cahalan" <acahalan@cs.uml.edu>
Date: Mon, 5 May 1997 16:49:06 -0400 (EDT)

I guess that means POSIX goes on the scrap heap?
It is amazing how people fight over little details
for the sake of POSIX and then scrap the whole thing
for a 64-bit dev_t.

I've done some more research into this topic, and it's not at all
obvious to me that it "puts POSIX on the scrap heap".

POSIX merely specifies that dev_t must be an arithmetic type (ISO/IEC
9945-1:1996, section 2.5).

It is true that "long long" is not recognized by ANSI C, but it is in
the ISO working group's committee to standardize C. So the upcoming ISO
standard for C will recognize "long long". POSIX states that you should
use whatever is the most recent version of the C standard coming out of
ANSI or ISO (section 1.2).

Furthermore, there's this gem in section 1.3.3

Although this part of ISO/IEC 9945 [the ISO name for POSIX]
references parts of the C standard to describe some of its own
requirements, CONFORMANCE TO THE C STANDARD IS UNNECESARY FOR
CONFORMANCE TO THIS PART OF ISO/IEC 9956 [emphasis mine]. Any C
language implementation providing the facilities stipulated in
Section 8 may claim conformance; however, it shall clearly state
that its C language does not conform to the C standard.

Hence, we can still claim POSIX.1 complaince; however, we'd have to
state in our conformance document that programs must be compiled using a
C compiler which has extensions to the ANSI C standard. This would only
be a temporary measure, until the ISO C standard gets approved.

I would guess a 64-bit dev_t will break _lots_ of
software that wants to put dev_t in an int.

Software that wants to put a dev_t in an int are broken according to
POSIX. You can only put a dev_t into a dev_t. Remeber, there are
platforms where an int is only 16 bits..... :-)

- Ted

\
 
 \ /
  Last update: 2005-03-22 13:39    [W:0.031 / U:0.296 seconds]
©2003-2020 Jasper Spaans|hosted at Digital Ocean and TransIP|Read the blog|Advertise on this site