adding if_dev member to struct ifnet

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

In message <200309301045.15776.vjardin at wanadoo.fr>, Vincent Jardin writes:
>Le Mardi 30 Septembre 2003 03:03, Brooks Davis a écrit :
>> [Previously posted to -net in another form.]
>>
>> I propose to add an if_dev member to struct ifnet.  It would be of type
>> device_t and be defined to point to the device for the interface or NULL
>> if there is no device (or if there was not an easy way to get access to
>> one).
>>
>> This change would codify the the relationship between an interface and
>> the underlying physical device.  It also would get rid of the existing
>> abuses of if_name to look up the driver associated with an interface
>> and simplify a number of messy cases in the conversion from if_unit and
>> if_name to if_xname.
>>
>> Does this seem like a reasonable thing to do?
>
>Yes, if it helps to remove if_name/if_unit, it is a thing to do. Moreover it 
>sounds a good idea to have the if_dev field into the ifnet structure.

Somebody please explain how this would work for non-hardware
interfaces like if_loop, if_tun, if_tap etc ?

device_t is what we use to hitch drivers to hardware.

ifnet is what we use to hitch drivers to the netstack.  

They should not be tangled.

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk at FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe    
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.