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Date:      Sun, 19 Sep 1999 22:30:25 +0200
From:      Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@critter.freebsd.dk>
To:        mjacob@feral.com
Cc:        Matthew Dillon <dillon@apollo.backplane.com>, dg@root.com, Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>, cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org, cvs-all@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: User block device access (was: cvs commit: src/sys/miscfs/specfs spec_vnops.c src/sys/sys vnode.h src/sys/kern vfs_subr.c) 
Message-ID:  <18167.937773025@critter.freebsd.dk>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 19 Sep 1999 13:20:59 PDT." <Pine.BSF.4.05.9909191318570.42254-100000@semuta.feral.com> 

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In message <Pine.BSF.4.05.9909191318570.42254-100000@semuta.feral.com>, Matthew
 Jacob writes:

>> Anyway, David (and Kirk through him) has already said their piece, and
>> still nobody has named an actual application which depends on bdevs 
>> soo...
>
>Isn't that reasoning in reverse? Wouldn't be fairer to state "the problems
>that we have in the rest of the system are so large because we allow block
>device access to user programs that we must kill off such access?".

In an ideal world yes.  I think the fully expanded version sounds like
this: 

   "
	Since having two kinds of access to the device confuses people
	used to Linux
    and
	Since bdevs gives rise to a complications with buffer/caching
    and
	Since having two interfaces forces us to have two majors for
	each device-driver
    and
	Since bdevs have not been returning write errors for 5+ years
    and
	Since most of the original reasons for having bdevs have gone
	away
    and
	Since nobody can show real-world applications which rely on
	the bdev interface
    then
	We should kill bdevs

   "

Sounds like the preamble to a V.FOO standard from CCITT...

--
Poul-Henning Kamp             FreeBSD coreteam member
phk@FreeBSD.ORG               "Real hackers run -current on their laptop."
FreeBSD -- It will take a long time before progress goes too far!


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