Re: potato missing /dev's
On 1 Feb 2000, James LewisMoss wrote:
> >>>>> On Mon, 31 Jan 2000 20:32:51 -0600, Steve Greenland <stevegr@debian.org> said:
>
> Steve> On 30-Jan-00, 13:03 (CST), Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org> wrote:
> >> Steve Greenland wrote:
> >> > devices in the current directory. I suppose there is some
> >> > traditional reason why this is so, but I'm very tempted to
> >> > report a fatal bug against it.
> >>
> >> Gah.
> >>
> >> Is there _anyone_ out there who has read the definitions of the
> >> bug tracking severities?
>
> Steve> Yes, I have, and I use them correctly when I actually report
> Steve> bugs. This was an offhand remark. Besides, "fatal" isn't a
> Steve> severity level.
>
> Steve> Don't you think that the fact that MAKEDEV, when run outside
> Steve> of /dev (by root, of course), creates the devices files in the
> Steve> current directory is a severe design flaw? With not even an
>
> No. For several reasons:
>
> 1) It's perfectly reasonable for someone to want device files that
> don't happen to reside in /dev.
> 2) The script isn't in /bin or /sbin. It's in /dev.
Which would be fine, except that it *is* in the default path, being
symlinked into /sbin.
We put things in the path so people can run them from any working
directory. This does seem foolish for something which does somethin most
people won't want if the wd is anything apart from /dev.
I suggest making the file live somewhere in /usr/lib, with a symlink in
/dev as currently. Then people who want to create device files elsewhere
just run (cd somewhere;/dev/MAKEDEV) whilst people who want them in /dev
run (cd /dev;./MAKEDEV) which is the historically accepted way of running
it.
Jules
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| Jules aka | jules@debian.org | Richmond, Surrey |
| Julian Bean | jmlb2@hermes.cam.ac.uk | TW9 2TF *UK* |
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