(Linus, please do not apply this.  After some patch review, I'll send
this to you along with driver updates to use it)

Attached is a patch against 2.4.3-pre6, which adds alloc_etherdev and
variants to the driver API.  This API addition should allow us to close
the gaping race between init_etherdev call time, and when the network
device is actually ready.

This version removes the DECLARE_xxx at the request of the crowd. 
Hooray for cut-n-paste code... please check for errors.

Driver API changes for this stable kernel series are:
* Six functions added,
* Four prototypes moved from netdevice.h to foodevice.h, and
* No behavior changes, no code changes requiring immediate driver
updates

Main change in this patch:
* New functions alloc_etherdev, alloc_fddidev, alloc_hippi_dev,
alloc_fcdev, alloc_trdev

Cleanup changes in this patch:
* Move prototypes from netdevice.h to foodevice.h: [un]register_fcdev,
[un]register_trdev
* Add inline source docs for init_xxxdev
* Move EXPORT_SYMBOL for public functions from net/netsyms.c to
net_init.c
* New function register_hipdev, for API completeness
* Remove duplicate code from unregister_hipdev, [un]register_trdev,
[un]register_fcdev
* tr_setup was exported but did nothing.  Rename tr_configure to
tr_setup, remove old no-op tr_setup.

-- 
Jeff Garzik       | More novel than War and Peace
Building 1024     | More tongue-in-cheek than a lesbian orgy
MandrakeSoft      | Sneakin' up like celery, yeah I'm stalkin'