Dunno about ioctl (I've seen lots of schemes proposed and used, and all of
them fall short), but it does seem silly that proc doesn't include version
numbers. Would it really be that painful to have the first line of a /proc
file be an interface version number? Old utilities that don't know about it
would have to be replaced, but right now that ends up being true anyway and
with no warning other than a paragraph buried in some text file. Worse, if
you have to dual-boot between kernels with incompatible /proc file formats,
you can't easily deal with both from a single utility: but with version
numbers, a utility could invoke code conditionally on the version number or
even run a backend selected by version number (/usr/lib/backend.d/ifconfig/X.
Y, anyone?).
I'm not talking about anything really complicated here, just having
/proc/foo/bar start with e.g. "!@ 1.1\n".
-- brandon s. allbery [os/2][linux][solaris][japh] allbery@kf8nh.apk.net system administrator [WAY too many hats] allbery@ece.cmu.edu electrical and computer engineering KF8NH carnegie mellon university
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