Re: RFC: Adding a hw.features[2] sysctl

On 2008-01-14, Igor Mozolevsky <igor_at_hybrid-lab.co.uk> wrote:
> On 14/01/2008, Nathan Lay <nslay_at_comcast.net> wrote:
>
>>  cat'ing /dev/cpuinfo sounds reminiscent to Linux /proc.
>
> No it doesn't - it's a perfectly fine Unix way of doing things... The
> purpose of /dev is to provide an interface to the devices on the
> machine, (query-capable-)CPU is a device... Having /proc as an
> interface to the kernel on the other hand...

Hm, I just fail to see the how the ioctl interface is different from
the sysctl interface in terms of semantic capabilites.

AFAICS you can syntactically transform some hypothetic ioctl call on a
/dev/ entry to a hypothethic sysctl invocation and vica versa.

So for me it seems to be just a matter of preference and style.

And you just _can't_ deny that defining a sysctl adheres more to
FreeBSD's conventions than adding a fancy new /dev node just to be
ioctl'd.

Csaba