Renaming of devices in 2.6.31

[Lars-Peter Clausen]

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Mike Westerhof wrote:
> Lars-Peter Clausen wrote:
>
>>>> But: pm-bt is gone anyway pm-gps is gone soon pm-gsm might
>>>> also go away, but if it's not it'll be renamed back.
>>> Is anyone preparing a document for the poor userland folks that
>>>  will get their peripheral control means ripped up side down?
>> Not yet. But once the kernel work has been done and there are no
>> more changes to be expected, I guess there will be detailed
>> information what has changed.
>>>> gta02-vibrator is called gta02::vibrator. And this will stay.
>>>>
>>> So gta01 will have a gta02::vibrator, oh well, there's much
>>> worse things in life than not making sense :)
>> No gta01 has gta01::vibrator
>
> This is all quite ridiculous -- so in addition to having to know
> the underlying machine (gta01 vs gta02), now userspace has to know
> what kernel version?  So all userspace apps now have to have a huge
> nested case structure to select the correct sysfs interface, based
> on the machine and the kernel version as well.
The second person who apparently missed pattern... "*::vibrator"
This will even work for non gta phone which use - to quote mickey -
"the _same_ interface and semantics".
>
> This is simply wrong.  A vibrator is a vibrator - call it
> gta0x::vibrator if you must.  And there's no need to change the
> other interfaces, and break userspace for numerous packages if the
> change is for no other reason than for the kernel tidiness.
> Compatibility DOES matter -- or will you next be removing all those
> ioctls that nobody seems to like and all the other "old" stuff in
> the kernel?  Of course you won't -- and neither should anyone mess
> with the established sysfs names for this device.
Yes, indeed breaking api is a really bad thing to do, I agree. But
sometimes you have to do it, because the old api is just stupid and
broken. And the number of applications using the gta01/gta02 sysfs api
is fairly small, so it shouldn't be to much of a problem patching them.
Btw. I wrote a mail about it a few months ago and nobody complained.


And if everything turns out according to plan there will even be a
neo1973-compatd which will provide the old names for applications that
cannot be changed. (Like gilln)

Furthermore nobody is forced to use 2.6.31. You can still stick with
andy-tracking or even apply your own patches on top of it
reestablishing the good old device name order.

- - Lars
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