Re: [PATCH 3/4] usb: Un-deprecate -usbdevice (except for -usbdevice audio which gets removed)

[Gerd Hoffmann]

  Hi,

> >  It is arguably the case for disk,
> > serial, net, and host, yet we removed those anyway, to make the regular
> > and more expressive interface the only one.
> 
> The problem with those devices was that they used their own parameter
> parsing code,

Yes, that was IMHO the most important issue.  Two ways to configure
devices, the usual properties and the hand-crafted and often buggy
device-specific parsers.

Now we are down to simple aliasing without parameter support, except
for braille which has the special chardev handling.  Given we keep
braille support anyway there is little reason to drop the aliasing
support for the other devices which don't require parameters.  It's
literally a single line of code per device, hardly a big maintainance
burden.  The benefit is we don't invalidate tons of webpages which
document "-usbdevice tablet" and the like.

> We didn't make up our minds for three years now. In my eyes that's a
> decision for keeping -usbdevice braille around.

Another option could be to integrate the braille bits into the
usb-braille device, then kill the separate chardev.  Which would
also drop support for serial braille devices.  Not sure how much
of a problem that would be these days.  But that likewise needs
someone to step up doing the work ...

take care,
  Gerd