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From: ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: a question about ar (really: tty driver)
Message-ID: <1547@botter.cs.vu.nl>
Date: Thu, 30-Jul-87 05:36:18 EDT
Article-I.D.: botter.1547
Posted: Thu Jul 30 05:36:18 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Aug-87 07:03:15 EDT
References: <310@galbp.LBP.HARRIS.COM> <1542@botter.cs.vu.nl> <328@galbp.LBP.HARRIS.COM>
Reply-To: ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum)
Organization: VU Informatica, Amsterdam
Lines: 24

In article <328@galbp.LBP.HARRIS.COM> bing@galbp.UUCP (Bing Bang) writes:
>>
>I am about ready to post the serial tty drivers, however there are some
>points I'd like to discuss.
>First off, the driver is not very V7ish. 
>Second, I made many changes to the way fs talks to the device drivers and
>the way messages are passed in general. 
> I can post all of these [changes] ... or I can post a fixed version of the
>tty driver that will work with the standard fs.
>
I am not at all enthusiastic about major surgery to FS to accommodate a new
tty driver.  One of my hopes in splitting FS off from the kernel was to
prevent changes in drivers from requiring changes in FS.  For another reason,
the Atari version of MINIX is almost done, and changing FS in the IBM
version will require either (1) changing the Atari version (no time for that),
or (2) having the IBM and Atari file systems different (not appealing).
Futhermore, I have frequently resisted the urge to "improve" on V7 on the
grounds that a consistent V7 is better than a weird mixture of V7, Sys 5 and
4.x.
Conclusion: I would much prefer the tty driver that works with the existing
FS and makes as few changes as possible to parts of the system outside of
tty.c.

Andy Tanenbaum (ast@cs.vu.nl)