Subject: Re: CVS commit: basesrc/lib/libutil
To: Jason R Thorpe <thorpej@wasabisystems.com>
From: Luke Mewburn <lukem@wasabisystems.com>
List: source-changes
Date: 12/10/2001 09:30:47
On Sun, Dec 09, 2001 at 11:34:57AM -0800, Jason Thorpe wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 09, 2001 at 03:49:27PM +1100, Luke Mewburn wrote:
> 
>  > opendisk(3) never supported a `wildcard' "iscooked" (as you call it.)
>  > Previously it just never enforced the BLK/CHR semantics.
> 
> Maybe you never understood the intent.

Given that I wrote opendisk(3) in the first place, maybe I didn't...
From the manual page:
	If iscooked is non zero, the ``cooked'' partition (block device)
	is opened, rather than the ``raw'' partition (character device).
It then goes on to explain the rules it uses in trying various path
combinations to successfully open a file.


> Basically, you didn't understand what "iscooked" was used for, and you
> changed the behavior without fully understanding the consequences.

I understood what iscooked was used for. I also understood that
opendisk(3) was being abused by some programs that wanted to take
arguments like "pci0",iscooked=1 and have that open "/dev/pci0"
(after trying "pci0" and "pci0d" in the current directory).
Such programs should have been using a more general opendevice(3) API.