Actually, I've always hated the notion of "public" versus "private", and I
think "serialP.h" is just a band-aid around a real problem which is that
there is quite a lot of incestuous knowledge about the tty layer and
serial devices all over the place.
First off, if it's really a _private_ header file, then it shouldn't be in
<linux/serialP.h> in the first place. It should be in drivers/char, and
you should use #include "16550.h" to make it clear that (a) it's not about
"serial devices", it's about a specific _class_ of serial devices and (b)
it's really just private to a specific driver (or two similar drivers),
and not a generic Linux header file.
Btw, calling the dang thing "16550.h" may be technically inaccurate (it
obviously is used a lot more chips than the 16550), but I think it is
_psychologically_ a lot closer to what you seem to have in mind for the
use. It would tell people what the file is about - which the current name
does not at all. The current name probably makes most people think that
the programmer was spastic and wrote an extra 'P' by mistake.
But I don't care all that much. I think that either we should do the
one-liner to make existing things happy as things stand (which is
basically what Alan did), or we should just fix the thing _right_, in
which case the "serialP.h" file goes away - moved or integrated, I don't
much think there is all that much of a difference (the integration should
be much more complete, with a "serial device layer" kind of support
structure etc).
Linus
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