Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: [PATCH] Clean up old names in tty code to current names | From | Valdis.Kletnieks@vt ... | Date | Mon, 10 Jul 2006 11:38:03 -0400 |
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On Mon, 10 Jul 2006 16:21:47 BST, Russell King said:
> Maybe - what if userspace is looking up /dev/tty0 in /proc/tty/drivers > and happens to know that it's called /dev/vc/0, because it's working > around this known idiosyncrasy of the kernel ?
It only breaks if it's being totally brain-dead and doing this:
if (!strcmp(inputdev,"/dev/tty0") inputdev = "/dev/vc/0";
and not bothering to check that /dev/tty0 could *possibly* actually appear in the /proc/tty entry. In fact, it would have to be actively asserting that it can't appear.
Code that does this sort of thing:
if (!strcmp(procentry,"/dev/vc/0") procentry = "/dev/tty0"; if (!strcmp(procentry, inputdev)) { whatever to to do when found }
will still work.
> That "terminally broken stuff" might just happen to work with today's > kernels. Even so, that's no reason to pile in additional user-visible > changes which could potentially have adverse effects.
Oddly enough, "This PoS code only happened to work" is considered a good and sufficient reason to fix kernel code. :)
Also, please note that I *did* agree with Alan - this needs to be done right in /sys first, and then tools updated. However, having provided a *correct* way to do it, we should not *then* use "old crap might break further" as a reason to not finish the cleanup.
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