Patch: replacing devfs_register(), please revert

Hi Christoph, hi everybody else,

please understand this mail as pretty late reply to your message http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0304.3/1172.html. This Maybe I'm a bit harsh, but...

Christoph, by applying the API change you announced in this mail you significantly crippled the functionality of the devfs system. Since I was not able to find any replies or complains I hope I'm just too stupid to understand your deeper intentions. Please enlighten if that's true.

The first major problem is that you removed the option to pass a pointer for file->private_data. This is usually worked around by static device lookup tables (evil, they cost static memory, usually about 80% of this memory is never used, in the remaining cases you are limited to NUM_MAX_XXX_DEVICES) or device lists that are searched using the minor number (still not very elegant).

This issue is getting pretty awful if you compare the voodoo we have to do in dvbdev.c where we have a pretty complex device file infrastructure with different devices using the same major number (for historical reasons, the roots of this API were once defined by Nokia). Compare the code path we have to go for a devfs-only system (CONFIG_DEVFS_ONLY is defined) compared to the else case for a classic major/minor based system (the #else case).

Take http://linuxtv.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/dvb-kernel/linux/drivers/media/dvb/dvb-core/dvbdev.c?rev=1.22&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup as reference, the version in the kernel source tree is stripped down and does not contains the 'correct', plain, devfs-only code path.

Even when the info pointer was only used by a single driver in the kernel when you proposed the API castration (drivers/input/evdev.c): this one was right. The correct way would have been to replace the old static device tables with their NUM_MAX_XXX_DEVICES #defines and all device lists including the search and list maintenance code by a single devfs_register() call using the info pointer.

Even more serious is the fact that you removed the possibility to pass the file operation struct on a per device basis. This causes even more braindead and complex workaround code, see the above dvbdev.c link, especially the function dvb_device_open(). it's a nifty piece of code, isn't it? Easy to understand and maintain -- we're doing there nothing else then replacing the fops by the one fitting this device. Note: also this code is only required for the #else path.

As side effect you always have to use both register_chrdev() and devfs_mk_cdev() in a driver. Useless bloat and error prone.

The third limitation introduced by removing the possibility of automatic major/minor allocation, the DEVFS_FL_AUTO_DEVNUM flag.

This causes an artificial limit in new DVB driver revisions to only 4 DVB adapters because of the limited number of available minor devices per major. (we need up to 64 minors per DVB adapter in complex settop box environments where we have multiple demultiplexers, MPEG decoders and conditional access devices per adapter). I suppose similiarly structured subsystems like the linux input subsystem will run in similiar troubles.

Well, we could work around this by allocating multiple major numbers for the DVB subsystem, but that's not really a alternative for a misdesigned API, right? (FYI: using 2.4 kernels people reported using up to 6 DVB cards in a PC using devfs and still have room for e.g. USB DVB devices)

so please revert your changes, or even better -- implement something like this:

extern int devfs_mk_node (dev_t proposed_major_minor,
umode_t mode,
struct file_operations *fops, void *private_data, const char *fmt, ...);

extern void devfs_remove (const char *fmt, ...);

and adjust the semantic maybe that way: leading directories in <fmt> get created automatically and removed as soon they're empty. This refcounting is already implemented in the current devfs implementation.

Re-enable the (de_)alloc_devnum() functions. Call these when the user passes a special proposed_major_minor, e.g. 0xff/0xff.

You don't need any devfs_mk_dir() function anymore. Fix all drivers using static device tables and make them use the private_data pointer.

Doing it this way you could save ~60 lines of pretty evil workaround code in the DVB subsystem device registration, I suppose similiar numbers are valid for other drivers as soon you remove the static device tables and lists.

@Christoph: Sorry for the harsh tone, but your ignorance and arrogance caused about 6 men-weeks useless work and workarounds in the DVB subsystem code (many thanks to Michael for his patience with your person), we just don't have the menpower to work around your toy API changes just for fun. We have 3 support for 4 new types of DVB PCI and USB adapters in the pipeline, we support a few more frontends but these patches are now delayed since months. Please keep compabitlity with existing APIs in mind when you break things next time. Functions that get a different semantic should get a different name, if you remove functionality from an existing API please check twice if it might make sense to use it and better fix the drivers using this API if so. Whenever you really want to rewrite an existing subsystem then _rewrite_ it, don't change things in place but start writing new code with an independent API and then move over all old dependent systems to the new one. Don't remove the old subsystem as long it's still used unless you're willing to fix the arising problems.

end of rant,
many thanks for your patience,

Holger

I don't think crippling is the right term, but yes I've been removing lots of functionality from devfs lately that belongs into different layers.

I think I already explained this in a mail to Michael with lkml CC'ed..

Please take a look at drivers/base/map.c and fs/char_dev.c in some recent 2.5 tree. The map a dev_t to private data functionality has been moved to common code now, devfs is a very wrong place for this.

Again, this was absolutely intentional. We now have generic code to map a dev_t to a struct file_operations and is horrible to duplicate this in devfs.

No. Remember that devfs is just _some_ way to represent device nodes to userspace and not even the preferred one. You always need to claim a dev_t range and if you want to support devfs in your driver you can also create a devfs node.

Just use the proper APIs instead - that would be alloc_chrdev_region in this case.

the major/minor split has become almost meaningless in Linux 2.5. We care about dev_t regions now.

no. devfs has no business knowing about driver private data or file operations - that's for a different layer.

There's still two places it is needed, and I haven't yet decided about some API changes that might make it mandatory in most drivers.

Maybe you should try to work with kernel people instead of agains us? I remember I tried to explain you all the API changes in detail and even explained you the old devfs APIs you didn't understand until you tried to piss me off as much as possible. After that fortunately Michael took over representing dvb to lkml and I had absolutely no problems working with him.

Not with APIs as broken as the old devfs code, sorry.

What functions got different semantics but kept the old name?