Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 21 Apr 2003 13:02:48 -0700 (PDT) | From | Linus Torvalds <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH] new system call mknod64 |
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On Mon, 21 Apr 2003 viro@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk wrote: > > stat() family, ustat(2), quota syscall, ioctls that pass device numbers, > /dev/raw, RAID, probably process accounting. > > FWIW, I believe that you are overestimating the amount of internal code > that cares about device numbers.
I don't think so. I agree that it's not very many places, and in fact the reason we currently do _not_ do dev_t replacement at system call boundary is that it looks to be so rare that it's easier to always use the user representation, and then always do the explicit MINOR/MAJOR in the places that use dev_t.
I don't really care which way it is done (ie system call boundary or in usage), and I'm happy with either - as long as it always _does_ get done, and nobody ever uses the user representation that can have aliases for anything important.
(My preference, quite frankly, is to always have major/minor be explicit, and never deal with "dev_t" at all. Especially with a 64-bit dev_t it is actually often _faster_ and _simpler_ to just carry major/minor around explicitly because then gcc won't ever have to worry it's small deficient brain about "unsigned long long".)
Linus
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