[gentoo-dev] devfs is dead, let's move on

[Greg KH <gregkh@gentoo.org>]

Ok, now that devfs is removed from the 2.6 kernel tree[1], I think it's
time to start to revisit some of the /dev naming rules that we currently
are living with[2].

To start with, the 061 version of udev offers a big memory savings if
you use the "default" kernel name of a device[3].  If you do that, it does
not create a file in its database in /dev/.udevdb/

If we can move away from some of our devfs-like names, we stand to
reclaim a lot of memory from everyone's machines.  As an example, if we
drop all of the tty/pts/vc/vcc symlinks, and just go with the default
kernel name, we save 2.5Mb of space in tempfs/ramfs.  I've done this on
my machines and everything seems to work just fine (it looks like
everything that was trying to use a tty node was just using the symlink
anyway.)

So, anyone have any objections to me changing the default udev naming
scheme in this manner?

Next up, that loony block device naming scheme (more on that later...)

thanks,

greg k-h

[1] Yes, 2.6.13-rc1 does not offer devfs as a kernel option anymore, but
    the code is still present if you know how to enable the option and
    rebuild your kernel with it.  I'll be working on killing it for good
    by, at the latest, 2.6.14.

[2] devfs vs. udev flames will dutifully be ignored.  Give up, it will do
    You no good to argue.

[3] HAL needs a patch to be able to handle this.  It's posted on the
    hal development mailing lists and will be checked in real-soon-now.
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