From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1754338AbZBGJCs (ORCPT ); Sat, 7 Feb 2009 04:02:48 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751634AbZBGJCd (ORCPT ); Sat, 7 Feb 2009 04:02:33 -0500 Received: from smtp-out003.kontent.com ([81.88.40.217]:44795 "EHLO smtp-out003.kontent.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751187AbZBGJCc (ORCPT ); Sat, 7 Feb 2009 04:02:32 -0500 From: Oliver Neukum Organization: Novell To: Greg KH Subject: Re: [PATCH 001/001] usbserial: New mobile broadband modems to be supported through option module Date: Sat, 7 Feb 2009 10:03:34 +0100 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.10 Cc: Dirk DeSchepper , USB development list , smurf@smurf.noris.de, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org References: <12047829252365@kroah.org> <200902062023.07759.oliver@neukum.org> <20090206234716.GB31059@kroah.com> In-Reply-To: <20090206234716.GB31059@kroah.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200902071003.35856.oliver@neukum.org> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Am Saturday 07 February 2009 00:47:16 schrieb Greg KH: > > The specifity is not affected at all. > > If you look at the names that were changed, they are now more > descriptive than before, always a good thing to have. They are not descriptive. As far as USB devices have names, these names _are_ the numbers. You will be very hard pressed to guess from a name on a box that you may or may not have which OEM's hardware really is in that box. If you have IDs everything is clear. People who look at this code will mostly have bug reports which will hopefully include lsusb, but not the symbolic name in the kernel. We dont do *(base + 8) = 0xb3; here. That would be bad. We use a clearly defined macro, USB_DEVICE which takes id _numbers_. Device IDs have no meaning. They are meant to be unique. You can give sensible names only to things that have meaning. This is like doing u8 init_string1[] = { INIT_STRING1_BYTE0, INIT_STRING1_BYTE1, ... Don't make a fetish out of symbolic names. Regards Oliver PS: Yes, I've had a professor who did prefer it this way.