Messages in this thread | | | Subject | RE: 2.6.16rc5 'found' an extra CPU. | Date | Thu, 2 Mar 2006 12:30:42 -0500 | From | "Brown, Len" <> |
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>On Thursday 02 March 2006 06:49, Brown, Len wrote: > >> I'm afraid that even after we get this stuff out of /proc >> and into sysfs where it belongs, we'll have to leave >/proc/acpi around >> for a while b/c unfortunately people are under the impression >> that the path names there actually mean something and >> they can actually count on them -- which they can't. > >But they should. Once you provide an interface here you >have to provide it essentially forever. Or at least if you really >change it use a very long deprecation period, but even that >is a bad thing to do to users.
The 4-character strings in the path names (eg "CPU0") are _arbitrary_. They come _directly_ from the BIOS source code and depend on whatever mood the BIOS writer was in that day. For this reason, users _can't_ count on these strings and these path-names being consistent across platforms.
Yes, this is a horrible design. Yes, I want to delete it in favor of sysfs as soon as possible, Patrick has a big patch set in development to get that ball rolling. Yes, users kick and scream whenever you change something they can see and thus it takes a long time.
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