In Linux 2.6, character device driver developers are supposed to use alloc_chrdev_region() and cdev_add() instead of register_chrdev(). See http://lwn.net/images/pdf/LDD3/ch03.pdf or http://lwn.net/Articles/126808/ .No answer in 3 days... Does anyone know whether register_chrdev is really supposed to go?
However, in 2.6.16, there are still *very few* uses of cdev_add(). Compare http://lxr.free-electrons.com/ident?i=cdev_add to http://lxr.free-electrons.com/ident?i=register_chrdev .
Are there plans to officially obsolete register_chrdev() (in particular through Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt)?
Unless register_chrdev() is supposed to stay, I'll be glad to participate in converting character driver code. In particular, would updates to the drivers/chars/mem.c file be welcome?