Subject: Re: [PATCH] Stop pmac_zilog from abusing 8250's device numbers.

From: [email-masked] (Linas Vepstas)
Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2007 11:22:34 -0500

On Tue, Apr 03, 2007 at 04:09:08PM -0700, Brad Boyer wrote:
> The issue is that the naming should be consistent. I
> shouldn't need to know what the hardware is to use what is fundamentally
> an abstraction of "serial port" as far as the user is concerned. On
> Solaris, I can say "/dev/term/a" and know that I will get the first
> serial port if it is available without needing to care if it is the
> zs, se or asy driver talking to the hardware.

I presume that a correctly structured set of rules for udev should
accomplish the same thing; when udev runs, it could create links to
/dev/serial0 or /dev/serial/0 etc. as you wish. Applications
"should" use the udev-created links, not the raw, underlying device
nodes.

The biggest problem would seem to be that the assignment would
depend on the detection order; there don't seem to be unique 
id's that would help udev consistently assign device names in 
consistent order.

--linas