Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sat 23rd Aug 2008 15:31 UTC
"Once upon a time, a Linux distribution would be installed with a /dev directory fully populated with device files. Most of them represented hardware which would never be present on the installed system, but they needed to be there just in case. Toward the end of this era, it was not uncommon to find systems with around 20,000 special files in /dev, and the number continued to grow. This scheme was unwieldy at best, and the growing number of hotpluggable devices (and devices in general) threatened to make the whole structure collapse under its own weight. Something, clearly, needed to be done." The solution came in the form of udev, and udev uses rules to determine how it should handle devices. This allows distributors to tweak how they want devices to be handled. "Or maybe not. Udev maintainer Kay Sievers has recently let it be known that he would like all distributors to be using the set of udev rules shipped with the program itself." ComputerWorld dives into the situation.
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Member since:
2006-01-04
I agree with the idea that most mainstream distros should be using the same default udev rules, but I don't think application writers should rely the /dev filenames to always be the same. The nice thing about udev and all the other various new Linux hardware APIs (e.g. HAL) is that they provide an abstraction above direct traditionally populated /dev filesystem queries. This is good for many reasons that I'm sure many people here are aware of, not in the least is extensibility.
The rules should be written for the ease of understanding and maintenance by system administrators, and should remain flexible for individual sysadmins particular needs. Software writers should ensure their software works even when you play around with the rules. This system-by-system flexibility is where Linux is currently a lot stronger than Windows, and I fear if these type of standards were too prevelant, app writers would start depending on facts that are virtually always true by convention, rather than always true by specification.
Edited 2008-08-23 16:46 UTC