Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sun, 29 Nov 1998 05:03:26 -0500 | From | Brian Gerst <> | Subject | Re: unkown PCI device |
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Albert D. Cahalan wrote: > Grrr... don't you even think of it! > > People paid money for those servers. How does /proc/pci hurt you? > If you don't like it, you have the config option. Maybe there should > never have been a /proc/pci, but it's there now and I'm addicted to it. > > One common complaint about Linux is that is changes too often. > This wouldn't be just a new version freaking out a PHB, but a real > incompatible change. It's not even a change we need for standards > compliance. If /proc/pci somehow impedes development, please explain.
The problem with /proc/pci is that is requires maintenance of a list of all known PCI cards inside the kernel. The kernel would need to be recompiled every time a new PCI device was added before it could be recognised. The point is that the kernel doesn't need the device name strings to operate, and they just add to kernel bloat. Besides, there is /proc/bus/pci, which although doesn't operate on name strings, could still be parsed by the X server by the vendor and product numbers. This change has been in the 2.1.x kernel for quite some time now, and the impending removal of /proc/pci has been known ever since. Just as in the case of the sound mmap fix, we can't let binary-only software force us to retain buggy or unwanted code, just for the sake of backwards compatability. There is still time for the commercial X servers to remove their dependency on /proc/pci before it is actually removed (not until at least 2.3.x). If they have been warned of the problem well in advance and still drop the ball (like Real did with the sound fix), it's their problem for not supporting their (paying) customers.
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Brian Gerst
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