Re: any thoughts yet on a "generic" ioctl.h?

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Fri, 9 Mar 2007, Stefan Richter wrote:

> Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> > if someone can't immediately see what i'm trying
> > to do given the previously-posted patch, then they shouldn't be
> > commenting on it one way or the other.
>
> I'm not sure if you are addressing me too.  Just to clarify:  I
> wasn't commenting on the patch, I only commented on what I quoted in
> my reply.

sorry, i worded that *really* badly.  i didn't mean to imply that
*you* were incapable of understanding what the patch represented --
i've seen enough of your posts to appreciate your technical expertise.

all i want to know is if the proposed patch making
include/asm-generic/ioctl.h more flexible is even *theoretically* a
feasible thing to do, or whether anyone on this list would have any
howling objections to it.

not only that, but i would *prefer* to submit just that file as a
first patch all by itself since, again theoretically, it shouldn't
break anything and i'd like to verify that first before trying to
simplify any of the arch-specific ioctl.h files one at a time.

as it is, the number of arch-specific ioctl.h files that could
potentially be made *much* shorter are for the arches:

  mips
  parisc
  alpha
  sparc
  sparc-64
  powerpc

all the rest simply include asm-generic/ioctl.h directly.

rday

p.s.  for those who may have come in late, the proposed new
asm-generic/ioctl.h file would allow an includer to override any or
all of:

  _IOC_SIZEBITS
  _IOC_DIRBITS
  _IOC_NONE
  _IOC_WRITE
  _IOC_READ

AFAICT, those are the only differences across the entire spectrum of
ioctl.h files.  if there's something i've missed, feel free to let me
know.

--
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Robert P. J. Day Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel
Pedantry Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA

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