Subject: Re: dynamic configuration (was Re: PR#4094)
To: Chris Torek <torek@BSDI.COM>
From: Darren Reed <darrenr@reed.wattle.id.au>
List: tech-kern
Date: 08/26/2000 12:13:17
Excuse my ignorance for a moment, but if you have a merged devsw entry,
how do you know which of the character/block devices you get by calling
open() if you're explicitly after one set of semantics and not the other?

If the answer is to supply an extra flag to open(), then surely there
must be issues for backward compatibility ?

I don't see the unified devsw a requirement for having devsw's local to
drivers for autoconfiguration to be easier.

Something which concerns me w.r.t. adding autocnfiguration (at this
stage) to NetBSD is what happens when drivers are loaded at different
major numbers (different card order, extra device, etc).  Some sort of
"devfs" is then required, unless certain drivers force themselves to
load at specific entries, right ?

Darren