makedev

[Bdale Garbee <bdale@gag.com>]

A warning to those who might want some warning...

The MAKEDEV we've been using is the one written in C.  The upstream author
expressed a fair degree of horror when he learned that we were using it, since
he hasn't worked on it in ages... and he didn't think anyone was still using
it... he had even requested it be removed from sunsite.  It also depends on 
a parser generator that is not free software... in fact, it apparently doesn't
even run on Linux.  I have an open bug now that would require a parser update 
to resolve, which is what caused me to start talking to the author.

So, I plan to punt the MAKEDEV written in C, and go "back to the future"
by switching to the shell script version.  The current version is 2.3.1, which
I've picked up from tsx-11.  This is what Redhat is using, and in fact the
current maintainer is Michael K. Johnson <johnsonm@redhat.com>.  After a quick
look, I can see no reason not to go with this version, and in fact, it should
make some things easier to handle.

I hope to have the new package together by this weekend.  If anyone has any
particular concerns about this change, and/or has any behaviours of the 
current MAKEDEV that they're depending on that they'd like me to try and
confirm are supported by the new package, please drop me some email asap.  

Bdale


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